HQ  734  .F7 

Forsyth,  Peter  Taylor,  1848 

1921. 
Marriage  :  its  ethic  and 


MARRIAGE 

ITS   ETHIC    AND    RELIGION 


WORKS  BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


Religion  in  Recent  Art. 

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LONDON:  HODDER  &  STOUGHTON 


,       NOV 

MARRIAGE       V 

ITS    ETHIC    AND    RELIGION 


/  BY 

V 


P.  T.  FORSYTH,  M.A.,  D.D. 

PRINCIPAL    OF     HACKNEY    COLLEGE,     HAMPSTEAD 


HODDER    AND    STOUGHTON 

LONDON   NEW  YORK   TORONTO 


Ptittfed  by  Hazel! ,  Watson  &  Viney,  Ld.,  London  and  AyUsburv. 


NOTE 

The  following  pages  are  the  expansion  of 
a  Lecture  delivered  in  connection  with 
the  National  Council  of   Public  Morals. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER    I 

PAGE 

The  Age's  Uncreating  Word       .         .         3 


CHAPTER    II 

Marriage   as   Individual,   Social,   and 

Religious       .         .         .         .         .11 


CHAPTER    III 

The  Christian  View  of  Marriage.     1. 

As  Monogamous      .         .         .         .25 


CHAPTER    IV 

The  Christian  View  of  Marriage.     2. 

As  Permanent  (Divorce)        .         .       37 

vii 


viii  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER    V 

PAGE 

The  Christian  View  of  Marriage.  3. 
As  Ethical  (The  Object  of  Mar- 
riage)   ......       57 

CHAPTER    VI 

The  Matter  of  Subordination    .         .       69 

CHAPTER    VII 

Leasehold  Marriage   ....       83 

CHAPTER    VIII 

The  Woman's  Protest  ...       99 

CHAPTER    IX 
A  Conservative  Sanctuary  .         .     Ill 

CHAPTER    X 
Love's  Dignity  and  Sincerity     .         .119 

CHAPTER  XI 

The  Effect  of  Literature  .         .133 

Epilogue        ......     151 


THE  AGE'S  UNCREATING  WORD 


CHAPTER    I 


THE   age's   UNCREATING   WORD 


npHE  present  is  an  age  of  what  Mr. 
Balfour  in  one  of  his  books  aptly 
calls  the  Uncr eating  Word.  Old  insti- 
tutions are  either  being  reconstructed  in 
practice,  or  they  are  being  dissolved  in 
thought  underneath  the  existing  practice. 
We  are  in  a  great  day  of  judgment — in 
this  sense  at  least,  that  we  are  deep  in 
the  critical  age  and  the  constructive  age 
has  barely  begun.  Dogma,  as  dogma,  has 
ceased  to  reign  ;  and  Idealism,  which 
ruled  for  a  time,  has  lost  much  influence, 
even  where  it  keeps  its  crown.  Society 
seems  to  have  become  so  stable,  so  un- 
sinkable,  that  we  feel  safe  to  challenge  all 
risks  at  full  speed.     We  cannot  believe 


4      THE    AGE'S    UNCREATING    WORD 

that  the  essential  boons  of  civiUsation 
will  be  lost,  and  we  think  we  can  toy  with 
a  great  many  of  the  sanctions  under  which 
they  have  been  secured. 

But  there  are  some  signs  beginning  to 
appear,  even  to  the  public  eye,  which  tend 
to  shake  this  confidence.     It  is  the  very 
central    and    vital    things    that    are    now 
flung  into  the  crucible.     Religious  belief, 
even  in  the  churches,  becomes  so  fluid  that 
many  sections  of  the  people  live  in  chronic 
doubt    if    there    is    firm    ground    at    all. 
Women  revolt.     Youth  revolts.     Capital 
revolts.      Labour    has    wakened    up     to 
a     sense    of    insurgent    solidarity    which 
threatens    national    dissolution.      It    has 
become  possessed  of  a  powerful  social  ex- 
plosive before  experience  or  responsibility 
has  taught  it  how  to  handle  it,  or  bred  a 
public    spirit,    as    distinct  from   a  class. 
And,  if  it  is  mishandled,  it  is  of  a  nature, 
from  its  position  and  function  in  society, 
to  cause  not  only  damage  but  wreck. 


THE    AGE'S    UNCREATING    WORD      5 

(And  so  it  is  also  with  the  central,  car- 
dinal institution  of  natural  society — mar- 
riage.    In  every  age,  of  course,  it  has  been 
morally  violated,  but  it  is  now  ethically 
challenged.     And  there  are  forms  of  the 
challenge  more  dangerous  than  violation, 
because  they  claim  moral  support.     It  is 
one  thing  to  confess  ourselves  too  weak 
or  wayward  to  keep  an  ideal  which  we 
yet  recognise  as  a  law,  and  it  is  another 
to  challenge  the   ideal  itself.     It  is   one 
thing  to  have  to  do  with  a  man  who  sins 
but    says,    '  I   know   it  is  wrong  '  ;    it  is 
another  thing  to  have  to  do  with  one  who 
sins   boldly   in  the   exercise   of  what  he 
believes    to   be    a   right,    not   to    say    an 
apostolate.     And  to-day  it  is  the  moral 
ideal  of  marriage  that  is  challenged,  and 
challenged  by  people  who  would  not  break 
its  laws  if  they  recognised  them,  but  who 
have  a  mission  to  dissolve  them  J 

What  we  have  to  do  with,  therefore,  is 
not  vice,  but  the  error  that  ends  in  vice : 


V 


6      THE   AGE'S   UNCREATING    WORD 

the  vice  that  begins  less  in  passion  than 
in  heresy,  but  which  is  perhaps  even  more 
fatal  to  society  in  the  far  end,  because 
it  is  believed  to  be  right.  Evil  becomes 
our  good,  and  purity  plays  with  perdition. 

The  traditional  view  of  marriage  is 
challenged  by  many  who,  though  they 
concede  too  much  to  the  fickleness  of 
passion,  are  in  a  totally  different  category 
from  the  swarms  of  blue-bottles  that 
hover  immune  upon  social  garbage.  It  is 
perhaps  not  from  such  foul  vice  that 
society  is  in  most  danger.  That  is  deadly 
for  weak  or  gross  individuals.  But  so- 
ciety is  most  affected  by  the  people  who 
care  for  purity  ;  and  it  is  in  most  peril, 
therefore,  from  decent  heresy  rather  than 
palpable  vice — from  social  heresy,  heresy 
as  to  what  constitutes  purity,  from  false 
theories  of  a  subject  more  vital  than  any 
other  to  social  welfare  and  cohesion.  It 
is  not  a  region  where  theory  is  academic 


THE    AGE'S    UNCREATING    WORD    7 

and  indifferent.  The  most  serious  danger 
is  from  critical  Idealists,  who  would  dis- 
solve the  traditional  view  of  the  sanctity 
of  marriage  under  the  belief  that  its 
fixity  is  a  premium  on  hypocrisy,  and 
that  they  are  exalting  and  purifying  it. 
They  would  do  so  by  making  it  more 
free.  They  have  imbibed  the  modern 
tendency  to  reduce  self-restraint.  They 
are  neither  vicious  nor  gross  (though  they 
are  sometimes  recalcitrant  and  anti-social 
in  temper)  ;  but  they  often  fail  in  two 
respects.  They  play  into  the  hands  of 
the  vicious,  because  they  fail  to  protest 
as  they  should  against  the  exploitation  of 
their  views  by  people  who  have  none  of 
their  idealism.  And  they  fail,  through  a 
lack  of  imagination  that  often  goes  with 
obsession  by  an  idea,  to  follow  out  the 
action  of  their  principles,  and  to  forecast 
the  consequences  of  their  views  when 
these  shall  have  become  a  social  creed. 


MARRIAGE    AS    INDIVIDUAL, 
SOCIAL,    AND    RELIGIOUS 


CHAPTER    II 

MARRIAGE   AS   INDIVIDUAL,    SOCIAL, 
AND   RELIGIOUS 

rr^HE  marriage  question  is  so  great 
that  it  has  many  aspects.  Three 
might  be  selected  in  chief — as  it  concerns 
the  pair,  as  it  concerns  society,  as  it  con- 
cerns God.  There  are  those  who  say, 
or  who  are  tempted  to  say,  that  it  concerns 
none  but  themselves.  There  are  others 
who  say  it  also  concerns  society,  but  no 
more.  And  there  are  those  who  think 
that  these  two  views  do  not  exhaust  the 
situation,  and  that  the  chief  factor  is  the 
reference  to  God  and  His  will.^  In  the 
first  case  marriage  is  treated  as  a  mere 

matter  of  private  consent,  and  it  is  justi- 

11 


12         MARRIAGE    AS    INDIVIDUAL, 

fied  by  the  mere  mutual  passion,  which 
says  to  society,  '  This  is  our  business  and 
none  of  yours.'  In  the  second  case  it  is 
a  matter  of  contract,  under  the  State, 
because  society  is  so  much  affected  by 
it  that  it  claims  the  right  to  be  consulted 
in  it,  and  to  give  public  sanction.  In  the 
third  case  it  is  a  matter  of  religion,  under 
the  Church,  which  brings  its  divine  sancti- 
fication. 

Now  I  do  not  think  that  many  who  are 
beyond  the  erotic  stage,  when  passion  is  its 
own  guide,  or  the  egoist,  where  individual 
rights  are  supreme,  and  where  everything 
is  sacrificed  to  liberty,  and  nothing  sacred 
from  it — beyond  these,  perhaps,  not  many 
would  defend  the  first  position.  Those 
who  claim  individual  freedom  have  always 
to  appeal  to  society  for  protection  in  its 
enjoyment.  They  live  securely  only  by 
a  social  consent.  And,  still  more,  f  the 
consequences  of  marriage  are  so  grave 
and  wide  for  society  that  it  never   can 


SOCIAL,    AND    RELIGIOUS  13 

be  confined  to  the  interests  of  the  pair 
concerned.  It  has  enormous  results  for 
the  pubHc :  first,  in  its  effect  on  the  moral 
personality  of  the  parties,  and  their  con- 
tribution to  the  social  tone ;  and,  second, 
in  respect  of  the  offspring  and  their  social 
education,  f  That  is  to  say,  marriage 
cannot  be  confined  to  the  affections  of 
the  married,  but  it  is  involved  in  the 
whole  ethic,  welfare,  and  dignity  of  the 
community.  J| 

That  is,  again  (putting  it  in  another 
way),  the  prime  concern  is  not  the  liberty 
of  the  individual,  or  the  couple,  con- 
cerned ;  it  is  not  private,  but  social ;  it 
is  the  interest  of  the  family.  It  is  the 
family,  not  the  individual,  that  is  the 
unit  of  society,  its  ultimate  atom  or  cell, 
so  to  say.  And  it  is  impossible  for 
society  to  allow  the  view  that  after 
mutual  passion  and  consent  all  else  is 
but  form,  and  therefore  entirely  flexible. 
That  is  not  ethical  at  all.     It  is  the  mere 


14         MARRIAGE    AS    INDIVIDUAL, 

aesthetic  or  erotic  view;  which  unfortu- 
nately has  great  currency,  because  it  is 
the  view  which  lends  itself  to  literary 
effect,  and  this  is  by  way  of  being  a 
literary  age. 

The  inference  from  this  plea  is  what 
many  draw,  that  the  form  should  cease 
or  change  when  the  passion  that  set  it  up 
ebbs  or  fails.  This  seems  to  mean  that 
love  has  no  tie,  that  permanent  fidelity 
is  not  essential  to  union;  which  would 
then  rest  rather  on  the  free  concourse  of 
passion  or  liking,  and  not  on  the  relation  of 
love  with  a  moral  nature*  But  no  society 
can  permanently  rest  on  the  mere  free- 
dom of  its  individuals  or  preferences. 
Some  form,  some  inhibition,  is  part  of 
its  reality,  however  it  may  vary.  It  is 
the  merest  abstraction  to  sever  them  and 
declare  that  either  is  indifferent. 

In  the  same  way  people  say,  in  a  kindred 
region,  "  If  I  have  the  religious,  or  the 
Christian,   spirit,   it  does  not    matter   in 


SOCIAL,    AND    RELIGIOUS  15 

what  form  of  belief  that  is  cast."  But 
no  religious  society  could  live  on  such 
Atomism.  Certainly  a  great  human  society 
like  the  Church  could  not.  The  form  of 
belief,  with  good  men,  may  vary  for 
different  ages,  but  it  is  never  indifferent. 
A  common  Belief  is  variable,  but  essential. 
And  so  with  the  other  great  human  society 
of  the  State.  It  also  has  its  practical 
dogmas.  It  could  not  allow  people  who 
use  its  advantages  and  claim  its  pale  to 
say,  '  Your  forms  are  entirely  at  the  mercy 
of  our  fancy.' 

y  It  is  only  when  marriage  passes  beyond 
mere  consent  that  it  becomes  an  ethical 
matter.  Only  then  is  it  moralised.  It 
becomes  a  matter  of  the  family,  of  kinship, 
and  therefore  of  the  State.  Indeed  it 
becomes  a  matter  of  human  society  a^: 
large,  which  must  always  bar  unions  that 
do  not  conform  to  the  conditions  of  its 
welfare  and  wait  on  its  consent.  Marriage 
is  a  social  act.     The  social  form  is   not 


16        MARRIAGE    AS    INDIVIDUAL, 

indifferent.  It  is  part  of  the  substance. 
It  is  a  piece  of  social  morality,  i,e,  of 
social  existence.  It  is  bound  up  with 
the  safety,  honour,  and  welfare  of  society.  ^ 

But  it  is  to  be  hoped  we  shall  never 
come  to  mere  civil  marriage,  as  if  it  only 
concerned  society.  If  anything  is  ethical 
on  that  universal  scale,  it  has  alreadv 
begun  to  be  more  than  ethical.  On  that 
wide  scale,  and  on  such  an  intimate 
subject,  it  becomes  also  deep  and  sacred, 
it  becomes  religious.  Even  if  you  own 
no  more  than  the  religion  of  Humanity 
that  is  so.  You  cannot  treat  human 
society  as  one  whole  without  your  ethic 
becoming  religious.  Even  the  Positivists, 
since  they  worship  Humanity,  treat  mar- 
riage in  their  religious  ritual  as  a  sacra- 
ment. And  I  do  not  wonder  that  the 
Roman  Church  treats  it  so.  I  do  not  agree 
with  that  Church  in  so  doing,  for  reasons 
which   would  be  misplaced   here.     All  I 


SOCIAL,    AND    RELIGIOUS  17 

do  say  is  that  the  more  one  ponders  the 
solemn  implicates  and  slow  effects  of 
marriage,  moral  and  spiritual,  the  more 
one  feels  that  it  has  something  sacramental 
in  its  nature.  It  may  be  less  than  a 
church  sacrament,  but  it  is  a  moral ;  it  is 
certainly  more  than  a  contract. 

We  all  know  that  there  are  marriages 
whose  slow  effect  is  to  deepen  and  enrich 
religion  on  both  sides  ;  while  on  the  other 
hand  there  are  cases  where  the  effect  has 
been,  on  one  of  the  parties  at  least,  to 
weaken  or  to  quench  the  religion  in 
which  they  began.  If  not  a  sacrament, 
it  is  a  means  of  grace;  and,  like  every 
means  of  grace,  it  sweetens  or  hardens 
according  as  it  is  used. 

At  any  rate  the  ethical  and  social  view 

of    marriage    is    quite    inadequate,    even 

if    Humanity  be  all   we   have   in   view ; 

how  much  more  when  we  have  in  view 

the    God    of    Humanity  ?     It    calls    for 

more   than   social   sanction — it   calls   for 
2 


18         MARRIAGE    AS    INDIVIDUAL, 

divine  sanctification,  if  life  do  so  at  all.  If 
it  means  so  much  for  the  soul  and  for 
society,  that  is  really  because  it  belongs  to 
the  Kingdom  of  God,  to  the  will  of  the  God 
'  Who  ordered  society  and  its  destiny.  If  it 
is  organic  to  the  structure  of  society,  it  is 
vital  to  the  purpose  of  God.  It  is  a  union 
which  reflects  a  union  deep  in  the  eternal 
nature  of  a  triune  God  Himself.  Hence  if 
religion  has  a  place  in  the  institution  of 
marriage,  its  proper  place  is  supreme. 
Wherever  it  has  a  place,  it  has  the  ruling 
place  by  right.  It  has  not  only  to  add  a 
benignant  blessing  to  a  natural  institution, 
but  it  has  the  right  to  rule  it  and  moralise 
it,  govern  it  and  lift  it  up,  as  it  has  the 
right  to  rule  every  great  juncture  of  life. 
Is  it  any  use  beating  about  the  bush 
here  ?  When  we  speak  of  religion,  do 
we  not  at  heart  mean  the  Christian 
religion,  as  gathering  up  all  that  is  best 
in  the  rest  ?  Again  I  say  I  do  not  want 
to  raise  theological  issues.     I  do  not  ask 


SOCIAL,    AND    RELIGIOUS  19 

what  the   exact  relation   of   Christianity 

mf 

is  to  other  reh'gions,  or  to  what  is  called 
natural  religion,  nor  in  what  sense  it  is 
unique.  I  only  say  it  is  in  a  real  relation 
to  them,  and  one  which  makes  the  most 
and  best  of  them,  and  reveals  the 
working  of  God  in  them  all.  If  there  is 
a  religious  view  of  life  and  of  marriage 
therefore,  it  must  be  the  Christian  view, 
substantially  and  in  the  long  run. 

And  I  will  take  another  step — it  must 
be  substantially  the  view  of  the  Church. 
By  which  I  do  not  necessarily  mean  what 
has  traditionally  been  the  view  of  the 
Church.  Nor  necessarily  the  view  of  a 
particular  section  of  the  Church.  But  the 
whole  Church  of  confessing  Christians  has 
the  only  right  to  say  what  Christianity 
is  or  should  be.  It  is  the  company  of 
the  soul's  experts ;  that  is,  the  experients 
of  the  Gospel  and  the  Spirit.  So,  by 
the  Church's  view  I  mean  the  form  which 
the  Church's  principle  may  come,  on  the 


y 


20        MARRIAGE    AS    INDIVIDUAL, 

whole,  to  take  when  we  examine,  in 
the  h'ght  of  an  instructed  faith,  both  the 
Gospel  and  the  modern  situation,  when  we 
review  all  the  questions  raised  about  the 
ethic  of  the  past  in  the  presence  neither 
of  passion  nor  of  tradition  alone,  but  of  the 
changed  social  conditions  and  distresses. 
For  the  present  challenge  of  marriage  has 
largely  a  social  cause  in  the  conditions 
of  the  great  city  and  its  industry. 

And  again  I  do  not  m.ean  that  the 
Church  has  the  right  to  force  its  law 
upon  the  State.  Much  of  the  prejudice 
against  religion  has  been  caused  by  the 
impression  that  the  Church,  in  pressing 
its  views,  is  seeking  to  coerce  the  public 
for  the  sake  of  its  own  power  and  place. 
Too  often  it  has  been  so  ;  but  I  am  sure  all 
that  is  best  in  the  churches  would  unite 
in  confessing  as  their  ruling  idea  that  of 
service.  If  the  Church  oppose  any  move- 
ment, it  should  only  be  in  obedience  to 
a  trust  committed  to  it,  and  in  the  defence 


SOCIAL,    AND    RELIGIOUS  21 

of  a  principle  put  in  its  charge.  No 
coercion,  no  lust  of  power.  And  let  us 
escape  from  mawkish  charity  to  remember 
that  sometimes  the  best  service  you  can 
render  men  is  to  combat  their  errors. 

Three  things  should  be  clear  in  this 
connection. 

1.  The  Church  has  no  right  absolutely 
to  forbid  the  State  to  modify  the  con- 
ditions of  divorce  according  to  the  ex- 
pediencies of  the  whole  practical  situation. 

2.  The  Church  has  a  right  to  make  and 
keep  its  own  marriage  laws,  and  it 
ought  to  be  in  no  position  where  it  cannot 
do  so.  Civil  marriage  is  compulsory, 
but  religious  is  optional,  and  it  need  not 
be  used  by  those  who  refuse  the  con- 
ditions. 

3.  From  the  Church's  point  of  view, 
and  speaking  generally,  the  chief  way  to 
deal  with  the  admitted  evils  is  not  legal 
but  moral,  not  to  relax  requirement  but 
to  increase  power.     True  Christian  faith 


22    INDIVIDUAL,   SOCIAL,   RELIGIOUS 

has  resources  of  power  which  obviate  the 
need  of  divorce.  Between  two  people 
confessing  Christ  and  serving  Him  in  the 
Spirit,  divorce  is  unthinkable,  and  neither 
Christ  nor  Paul  contemplates  it. 


THE    CHRISTIAN    VIEW    OF 
MARRIAGE 


CHAPTER    III 

THE    CHRISTIAN    VIEW   OF   MARRIAGE 

TF  it  were  said  by  any  that  religion 
and  the  Church  have  little  to  do 
with  marriage,  it  is  impossible  to  say  that 
Christ  had  little  to  do  with  it.  It  would 
be  nearer  historic  truth  to  say  that  the 
subject  almost  fascinated  Him.  He  was 
not  a  social  reformer  nor  a  political 
liberator  (though  nothing  has  been  such 
a  power  in  both  directions  as  His  Gospel). 
And  yet  He  had  very  much  to  say  of  a 
most  positive  kind  about  the  keystone  of 
society,  marriage.  He  said  it  so  strongly 
and  positively,  that  most  people  have 
thought  He  was  actually  legislating  about 
it.  But  He  was  not  a  legislator  either.  He 
was  not  engrossed  with  its  effect  and  value 
for  natural  society ;  as  is  shown  by  the  fact 

25 


26  THE    CHRISTIAN    VIEW 

that,  when  He  speaks  of  its  permanence  or 
its  breach,  He  says  nothing  in  the  interest 
of  the  children,  which  is  so  vital  to  the 
social  aspect  of  the  case.  He  thinks  of 
it  theologically,  not  sociologically,  as  an 
expression  of  the  will  of  God  for  His 
Kingdom,  and  not  as  a  piece  of  natural 
social  ethic.  (For  the  Kingdom  of  God  is 
not  a  thing,  not  a  particular  social  fabric, 
but  a  certain  common  relation  to  Him.) 
If  He  had  thought  of  it  chiefly  as  a  piece 
of  general  ethic,  He  would  have  been  much 
more  specific  about  it,  considering  the 
immense  stress  He  laid  upon  it.  But 
He  treats  it  only  in  relation  to  the  Jewish 
forms  of  it  that  were  before  Him  and  His 
public.  If  Jesus  was  a  legislator,  Christi- 
anity must  be  monkery  or  Tolstoiism. 

A  great  part  of  the  suspicion  and  hatred 
towards  His  Church  has  arisen  from  its 
mistake  in  thinking  that  His  principle 
for  His  ideal  Kingdom  was  legislation  for 
general  society.     But  He  was  not  legislat- 


OF    MARRIAGE  27 

ing  even  for  His  Church  ;  which  is  not 
identical  with  the  Kingdom  any  more 
than  with  natural  society,  and  which 
did  not  yet  exist.  And  if  He  was  not 
legislating,  the  Church  has  much  freedom 
in  applying  His  great  principles  to  a 
particular  age  and  stage.  But  His  ideal 
principle  is  very  clear.  He  was  arrested 
upon  this  idea  of  marriage,  and  upon 
what  I  have  called  the  sacramental  signi- 
ficance of  it.  He  was  the  legatee  of  the 
great  spiritual  tradition  of  His  nation, 
which  (with  great  tenderness  often)  re- 
garded the  national  relation  to  God  as 
wedlock,  and  treated  public  apostasy  as 
adultery.  (Marriage  was  the  point  where 
God  most  closely  touched  man,  so  far  as 
social  ordinances  were  concerned  ;  just 
as  Christ  Himself  was  that  point  so  far 
as  the  soul  was  concerned.  We  see  then 
how  little  wonderful  it  is  when  Paul  treats 
Christian  marriage  as  the  great  natural 
and  social  symbol  of  Christ.     Paul's  ideal 


28  THE    CHRISTIAN    VIEW 

attitude  was  but  the  continuation  of 
Christ's  own.  And  it  was  slowly  revolu- 
tionary for  the  world's  idea  of  marriage^^. 

I  cannot  go  into  much  detail  as  to  the 
Christian  view  of  marriage,  nor  at  all  into 
its  spiritual  symbolism  of  Christ's  relation 
to  His  Church.  I  am  more  concerned  with 
the  Christian  ethic  of  it  as  an  institution 
for  men  than  with  its  spiritual  suggestive- 
ness  in  our  relation  to  God.  It  must  be 
clear  that  the  Church,  as  the  trustee  of  the 
Gospel,  is  bound  always  to  have  much 
to  say,  and  especially  to  its  own  members, 
on  the  subject.  And  to  repudiate  its 
every  interference  as  a  piece  of  ecclesias- 
tical intrusion  is  mere  journalese. 

I  will  only  mention  the  chief  points 
of  the  Christian  position. 

1.  Christian  marriage  is  monogamy 
Polygamy,     in    principle,    and    as    an 
institution,   is  licentious.     I  say  nothing 
of    practice    in    particular    cases.     There 


OF   MARRIAGE  29 

is,  of  course,  the  ready  remark  that  in  the 
Old  Testament  polygamy  was  permitted 
and  practised,  even  to  the  extent  that 
it  was  not  wholly  extirpated  in  Christ's 
time.  And  the  one  and  final  reply  is 
this  :  The  entire  drift,  and,  you  might 
almost  say,  a  leading  purpose,  of  the 
Bible  history  is  to  show  that,  when  we 
read  the  cases  in  the  context  of  the  whole, 
its  consequences  are  not  only  unsocial, 
but  disastrous  and  tragic.  It  is  always 
shown  by  the  event  (though  the  Bible 
does  not  lecture  about  it)  to  be  a  family 
bane,  the  source  of  sin,  crime,  and  ruin. 
Polygamy  is  fatal  to  moral  development, 
family  life,  and  social  peace.  It  is  semi- 
barbaric.  It  means  the  slavery  of  woman. 
And  it  has  its  ground  either  rudely  as 
legalising  lust,  or  crudely  as  providing 
population.  One  need  hardly  discuss  poly- 
gamy in  this  country,  except  for  the  fact 
that  it  comes  back  upon  us  in  another 
form — in   the  successive,   instead   of  the 


30  THE    CHRISTIAN    VIEW 

simultaneous,    form    of    temporary    mar- 
riage.    Of  which  more  anon. 

The  plea  is  urged  sometimes  that  poly- 
gamy in  any  kind  is  the  natural  thing, 
and  that  a  monogamous  restriction  is 
unnatural,  and  artificial^  and  unreal. 
But  there  are  no  words  in  which  we  need 
more  education  than  those  that  deal  with 
the  natural  or  the  real.  What  do  you 
mean  by  natural  ?  Do  you  mean  instinc- 
tive and  primitive,  or  evolutionary  and 
civilised  ?  Have  you  grasped  the  mean- 
ing of  evolution  for  nature  ?  If  you 
mean  by  natural  what  is  the  original  form, 
of  course  that  is  polygamy,  not  to  say 
promiscuity.  But  to  go  back  to  the 
brute  is  not  to  be  natural.  The  doctrine 
of  evolution  has  knocked  on  the  head 
those  social  theories  which  began  by 
imagining  an  aboriginal  state  of  nature 
and  went  on  striving  back  to  it,  either  as 
it  was  in  Eden  or  anywhere  else. 


OF    MARRIAGE  31 

The  natural  is  what  corresponds  with 
the  line  and  tendency  of  evolution,  of 
civilisation ;  the  unnatural  is  what 
thwarts  that  process.  And  the  whole 
natural  history  of  society  has  been  the 
process  of  evolution,  by  a  costly  struggle, 
from  conditions  polygamous  to  conditions 
monogamous.  And  we  may  take  it  as 
a  social  dogma  that  the  welfare  of  any 
community  is  bound  up  essentially  with 
the  canonisation  of  monogamous  marriage. 
Monogamy  is  the  index  of  civilisation. 
That  is  the  true  nature  of  society,  the 
nature  which,  through  all  its  history,  has 
been  working  to  the  top,  where  civili- 
sation, through  Christianity,  has  now 
fixed  it. 

Monogamy  is  not  a  mere  social  con- 
vention. Even  if  it  were  but  that,  it  would 
still  be  of  the  greatest  value  and  authority. 
It  represents  the  upward  struggle  of 
millenniums  in  the  civilisation  of  the  race, 


32  THE    CHRISTIAN    VIEW 

a  struggle  so  great  and  stubborn  that  it 
is  not  at  an  end  yet,  even  in  our  Western 
civilisation.  Prostitution  is  the  lees  and 
dregs  of  polygamy.  But  monogamy  is 
more  than  a  social  achievement.  It  rests 
on  a  deep  and  commanding  moral  base. 
The  material  side  of  love  is  real  enough, 
it  is  imperious  enough,  and  it  has  of 
course  its  proper  place  and  sacramental 
value  for  true  love.  But  that  place  and 
value  is  one  which  must  retire  more  and 
more  to  the  rear  as  love  grows  more  and 
more  love.  By  the  very  course  of  nature 
it  does  in  age.  When  true  love  is  once 
set  alight,  the  flame,  or  the  beauty,  may 
go  out  that  kindled  it.  The  material  base 
is  more  and  more  mastered  by  the  moral 
and  spiritual  fellowship,  by  the  real  com- 
munion of  heart  and  soul  which  is  the 
great  personal  purpose  of  marriage. 

The  purpose  of  love's  union  is  the 
mutual  and  practical  culture  of  character 
in   all  fine   and   intimate   moral  growth. 


OF  MARRIAGE  S3 

Without  this  the  sensuous  side,  in  any 
personahty  which  rises  above  the  brutes 
by  having  a  moral  nature  and  destiny, 
is  mere  sin.  What  follows  ?  Surely  this, 
that  love  may  not  be  spent  on  the  opposite 
sex  as  a  sex.  That  would  justify  the 
widest  and  wildest  licence.  It  can  only 
be  morally  spent  on  a  single  personality. 
For  each  the  other  is  the  sex  in  this 
regard.  Only  so  is  moral  culture  by  its 
means  possible.  Multitude  makes  soul- 
communion  and  moral  interaction  im- 
possible. It  means  debasement.  And 
the  ethic  which  sings  of  a  Don  Juan  as 
being  false  to  every  woman  but  always 
true  to  love,  is  literary  blackguardism. 

The  same  principle  prescribes  also  the 
lifelong  permanence  of  marriage.  All  re- 
lations which  are  but  temporary  in  their 
nature  defy,  in  various  degrees,  the  prin- 
ciple that  passion  is  there  for  the  uses 
and  ideals  of  the  moral  soul.     And  such 

relations   are   a   crime   against   an   ideal 
8 


S4    CHRISTIAN   VIEW   OF   MARRIAGE 

Humanity  no  less  than  a  holy  God.  A 
complete  Humanity  rests  on  men  and 
women  who  do  not  simply  fuse  in  passion, 
but  who  grow  into  each  other  in  sacrifice 
as  only  souls  can.  And  that  again  rests 
on  a  moral  equality  of  the  sexes,  which  is 
possible  only  if  they  are  not  identical 
but  complementary.  The  rights  are  equal 
but  not  the  same.  Man  and  wife  are  one 
flesh  as  one  spiritual  personality;  one 
not  by  an  outward  bond  or  promise 
merely,  but  by  each  being  the  other's 
inner  complement.  They  interpenetrate. 
They  make  up  a  joint  personality  by  the 
harmony  of  an  indelible  psychic  differ- 
ence. And  this  dual,  or  complex,  person- 
ality (the  family  idea)  is  the  base  of  the 
corporate  unity  of  society.  And  it  is  the 
point  of  attachment  for  those  great 
spiritual  analogies  which  connect  Christ 
so  intimately  with  a  human  society  in  the 
Church. 


THE    CHRISTIAN    VIEW    OF 
MARRIAGE — continued 


CHAPTER    IV 

THE    CHRISTIAN   VIEW   OF   MARRIAGE 

CONTINUED 

2.  Christian  marriage  is  indissoluble 

TTERE  the  Christian  law,  in  so  far  as 
it  is  a  law,  and  in  so  far  as  the 
ideal  society  of  Christ  is  concerned,  is 
absolute.  I  more  than  doubt  if  the  ex- 
ception imbedded  in  Christ's  words  about 
divorce  is  genuine.  The  whole  tone  of 
the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  is  absolute,  and 
does  not  deal  in  exceptions.  It  does  not 
touch  the  region  of  casuistry.  The  ex- 
ception is  mentioned  only  in  Matthew. 
And  moreover,  as  Christ  was  speaking  of 
His  ideal  Kingdom,  He  could  not  think 
of  TTopveCa  there,  and  therefore  could  not 
except  it.     The  point  is  a  difficult  one, 

37 


88  THE    CHRISTIAN    VIEW 

however  ;  and,  if  we  took  a  text  alone  to 
settle  the  question,  we  could  not  be 
dogmatic.  We  could  not  dogmatise 
morally  (as  society  does  about  marriage) 
on  the  basis  of  a  fine  point  of  criticism. 

If,  however,  infidelity  were  a  ground 
for  divorce,  it  is  not  the  only  ground. 
St.  Paul  allows  it  for  malicious  desertion 
by  a  Pagan  spouse  (1  Cor.  vii.  15).  And 
it  should,  for  Christians,  be  equally  a 
ground  on  both  sides,  having  regard  to 
the  spiritual  equality  secured  by  Christ 
for  the  woman  on  grounds  which  are  at 
the  mercy  of  no  texts.  That,  of  course,  is 
not  in  Christ's  express  teaching,  which, 
here  as  elsewhere,  moves  formally  in  the 
lines  of  Oriental  jurisprudence  or  custom, 
and  does  not  sjDcak  of  the  woman's  rights. 
But  it  is  in  Christ's  principle  and  Gospel. 
The  case  of  slavery  is  analogous.  The 
New  Testament  does  not  destroy  it,  but 
its  Gospel  does.  So  Christ  did  not  say  the 
Oriental  position  of  the  woman  in  marriage 


OF   MARRIAGE  39 

was  slavery,  but  He  destroyed  it.  And, 
another  thing :  the  more  you  make  mar- 
riage indissoluble,  the  more  you  must 
press  the  Christian  duty  of  forgiveness  for 
lapse,  and  of  restoration,  unless  the  sin 
become  a  habit ;  then  separation,  whether 
divorce  or  not. 

But  the  chief  practical  ground  for  the 
indissolubility  of  marriage  among  the 
people  of  Christ  is  this,  that  Christianity 
opens  moral  resources  which  enable  men 
and  women  to  overcome  the  difficulties 
and  disillusions  of  married  life.  The 
Church  law  of  divorce  ought  to  be  more 
exigent  than  the  State's,  because  the 
Church  provides  more  resources  for  avert- 
ing it,  and  it  can  never  be  but  an  extreme 
step  when  all  else  has  failed.  For,  even 
in  the  fading  of  young  passion,  even  amid 
some  disillusion,  the  relation  ripens  to  be- 
come a  very  intimate  aspect  of  Christian 
love.  Christianity  provides  for  its  true 
disciples  a  resource  whereby  Christian  love 


40  THE   CHRISTIAN   VIEW 

so  schools  the  character  and  temper  that, 
when  the  romance  is  gone  that  played  too 
great  a  part,  a  kmdly  life  is  possible  still, 
in  which  indeed  a  new  and  deeper  affection 
may  grow  up.  That  happens  in  nature 
for  the  children's  sake ;  where  there  are 
no  children  it  should  happen  in  grace  for 
Christ's  sake. 

And  if    the  growth  of    wickedness  on 
one    side    went    so    far    that   there   was 
nothing  but  separation  for  it,  then  the 
same  spiritual  resource  is  at  our  disposal, 
if   we   will,    to    make   solitude   tolerable, 
however     hard.      In     a     truly    Christian 
Church  there  would  be  means  of  much 
alleviating    the    solitude.     The    precepts 
of  Christ,  especially  in  the  Sermon,  were 
for   those   who   had    such    resources,    es- 
pecially in  Himself  ;    and  they  were  not 
for  those  who  stood  no  higher  than  the 
moral  plane  of  the  public  or  the  State. 
The  Church,  therefore,  cannot  be  so  lax 
here  as  the  State. 


OF    MARRIAGE  41 

Moses,  the  statesman,  permitted  divorce 
because  of  the  hardness  of  the  pubHc  / 
heart.  That  phrase  does  not  mean  heart-  / 
lessness,  nor  what  we  mean  by  hardness, 
i,e.  brutahty  of  feehng,  nor  overt  hostihty 
to  God  and  His  rule.  That  was  not 
Israel's  case.  It  means  moral  backward- 
ness, an  inferior  stage  of  moral  culture. 
In  this  respect  what  is  possible  to  a 
constitutional  state,  where  law  represents 
the  moral  average  and  not  the  moral 
aristocracy,  is  always  behind  the  principle 
of  the  spiritual  society.  So  long  as 
natural  egoism  and  self-pleasing  is  un- 
broken, the  indissolubility  of  marriage 
cannot  be  carried  out.  Burdens  greater 
than  the  bearing  power  make  ruin.  The 
absolute  indissolubility  of  marriage  is  a 
principle  only  in  the  region  of  Christian 
obedience  and  Christian  power.  Christian 
ethic  is  not  possible  without  a  common 
Christian  faith  ;  and  for  such  faith  there  is 
no  other  ethic.     Indissolubility  is  only  the 


42  THE    CHRISTIAN    VIEW 

principle  of  the  society  whose  existence 
is  obedience  to  Christ,  and  of  that  society, 
moreover,  in  the  ideal  and  exigent  stage 
in  which  Christ  always  saw  it — as  in 
children  He  beheld  their  angel  and 
destiny  ever  before  the  Father's  face. 

The  ethic  of  the  Church  must  always 
seem  exacting  to  the  ethic  of  the  State. 
And  the  Church  must  keep  its  ideal  clear, 
if  it  is  to  educate  the  State  in  such  matters, 
even  at  the  cost  of  seeming  to  be  some- 
what stiff.  The  State  must  be  popular, 
the  Church  need  not,  and  often  must 
not.  The  standard  of  the  State  is  not 
the  standard  of  the  Church  ;  and  neither 
part  has  the  right  to  force  its  standard 
directly  on  the  other.  The  Church  cer- 
tainly ought  to  be  in  no  position  which 
compels  it  to  accept  the  lower  standard 
of  the  courts.  And,  of  course,  it  ought 
in  all  circumstances  to  refuse  to  marry 
again  the  offender  of  a  divorced  pair. 

But  I  shall  be  asked  about  the  treat- 


OF    MARRIAGE  43 

ment  of  the  injured  party  in  the  case. 
That  makes  a  great  difficulty  from  the 
Church's  point  of  view.  Christ  says 
nothing  about  the  injured  party  any  more 
than  He  does  about  the  children ;  which 
shows  that  He  was  not  legislating,  but 
illustrating  a  moral  ideal.  He  does  not 
say,  '  It  is  my  will  that  marriage  in  my 
Kingdom  should  be  indissoluble.'  He  says 
that  the  spiritual  conditions  of  His  ideal 
Kingdom  are  such  that  the  dissolution  of 
marriage  is  never  called  for.  The  solvent 
influences  are  either  not  there,  or,  if  they 
arise,  they  are  submerged  and  transmuted 
by  Christian  love.  The  conditions  of 
divorce  do  not  exist  in  His  Kingdom.  He 
was  not  legislating,  as  I  insist.  No  legis- 
lator could  ignore  such  large  factors  in 
the  case  as  the  children  especially.  And  the 
Church  found  it  could  not,  as  soon  as  it 
began  to  legislate  on  the  family  very 
early  in  its  career. 

As  Christ  Himself  taught  once  from  a 


44  THE    CHRISTIAN    VIEW 

child,  so  the  children  became  His  means 
of  teaching  the  Church  what  marriage 
should  be  in  practice.  The  interests  of  the 
children  implied  much  about  the  parents 
and  their  marriage,  and  they  corrected 
much  in  the  conception  of  marriage  where 
isolated  and  literalised  dicta  misled.  Cer- 
tain passages  of  Paul,  for  instance,  make 
such  correction.  In  the  interests  of  the 
children  the  casuistry  of  the  Church  had 
to  both  keep  and  modify  the  absoluteness 
of  Christ's  ideal.  And,  moreover,  all  the 
New  Testament  regulations  were  conceived 
under  the  influence  of  the  expected  and 
near  parousia,  when  all  existing  relations 
should  be  dissolved. 

Considering,  further,  that  Christ's  words 
referred  only  to  arbitrary  dismissal  by 
the  man,  and  not  to  the  solemn  decision  of 
a  court  of  justice  (which  did  not  exist  for 
such  cases),  they  should  no  more  be  applied 
to  that  decision  than  "  Swear  not "  applies 
to  oaths   in  court,   or   "  Thou  shalt  not 


OP   MARRIAGE  45 

kill  *'  to  judicial  executions.  We  have 
three  grades  of  moral  attainment — the 
State,  the  Church,  and  the  Kingdom  of 
God;  and  what  Christ  had. in  view  was 
the  Kingdom,  and  the  ideal  Kingdom, 
which  in  both  State  and  Church  was  but 
in  the  making.  It  was  only  in  the  ideal 
Kingdom,  or  under  such  individual  re- 
lation to  Himself  as  should  one  day  be 
universal  in  the  Kingdom,  that  the  spiritual 
conditions  were  present  which  made 
marriage  absolutely  permanent  till  it  was 
absorbed  in  the  divine  purpose. 

I  should  therefore  find  it  very  hard 
to  refuse  as  a  minister  to  re-marry  the 
innocent  party.  And  I  should  find  one 
line  of  guidance  in  another  part  of  Christ's 
teaching.  A  second  marriage  after  the 
death  of  the  other  partner  is  not  forbidden, 
either  by  Christ,  or  the  Apostles,  or  the 
Church.  What  Christ  says  about  the 
relations  of  the  married  in  the  other 
world  seems  to  refer  not  to  the  continu- 


46  THE   CHRISTIAN   VIEW 

ance,  but  only  to  the  exclusiveness  of  the 
relation.  That,  He  taught,  ceased,  though 
all  relation  did  not.  The  exclusiveness 
of  the  relation  ceased  ;  and  that  is  what 
infidelity  destroys.  What  is  destroyed  by 
infidelity  is  that  which  is  also  destroyed 
by  death — the  exclusiveness.  The  rela- 
tion itself  could  only  be  totally  destroyed 
by  complete  oblivion,  which  is  impossible 
in  either  case  if  moral  growth  is  to  go  on 
in  another  life  at  all.  Hence,  if  the 
second  marriage  of  the  survivor  is  lawful 
after  death,  it  is  similarly  lawful  to  the 
moral  survivor  after  the  other's  death 
by  infidelity  and  divorce. 

Could  the  Church  recognise  a  civil 
divorce  for  other  reasons  than  infidelity, 
say  for  incompatibility  ?  On  the  whole, 
no.  But  the  difficulty  is  immense,  having 
regard  to  the  fact  that  there  is  no  sharp 
line  that  man  can  draw  between  Church 
and  world,  and  that  in  all  the  churches 
there  are  multitudes  on  the  lower  level. 


OF   MARRIAGE  47 

which  must  be  treated  with  some  reference 
to  its  moral  power.  For  the  ideal  Church, 
where  all  are  in  complete  relation  with 
Christ  and  filled  with  the  Spirit,  marriage  of 
course  is  indissoluble.  Divorce  is  always 
a  confession  of  defective  Christianity.  But 
we  are  not  at  that  high  stage.  The  nation 
certainly  is  not,  as  we  have  had  to  recognise. 
But  the  Church  also  is  not.  The  actual 
Church  is  not.  The  Church  is  not  yet 
the  Kingdom.  The  hardness  of  heart,  the 
moral  backwardness,  is  not  confined  to  a 
churchless  public.  And  it  is  mere  purism 
to  act  as  if  it  were.  The  whole  Church 
(like  the  Christian  personality  itself)  is  but 
being  made  ;  and  the  same  is  true  of  the 
ideal  marriage  even  within  the  Church. 

Within  the  Church  we  have  to  deal 
with  moral  conditions  far  short  of  the 
ideal  (but  certain)  consummation  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God,  which  I  have  said  and 
not  any  actual  church,  was  in  Christ's 
eye  as  He  spoke.     And  the  steps  to  reach 


\J 


48  THE   CHRISTIAN   VIEW 

it,  at  each  growing  stage,  were  at  the  dis- 
cretion of  the  Spirit,  which  guides  the 
Church  in  the  wisest  way  to  that  end. 
Perfect  Christian  marriages  may  be  few, 
but  they  are  prophetic.  And  what  is 
required  at  any  stage  is  that  nothing  be 
done  to  surrender  the  ideal  principle,  and 
everything  which  on  the  whole  promotes 
it.  That  cannot  always  be  done  by  a 
non  possumus. 

Within  the  Christian  pale  there  are 
many  degrees  of  spiritual  attainment  and 
moral  culture.  And  what  is  called  for 
is  not  an  iron  law,  which  is  not  congenial 
to  any  idealism,  or  any  nurture,  but  a 
principle  which,  with  a  changeless  flexi- 
bility, has  in  itself  the  power  also  to 
educate  men  up  to  itself.  It  has  to  be 
opportunist  in  order  to  make  itself  in  the 
end  absolute — so  long  as  it  is  educative, 
preserves  its  identity  in  its  condescension, 
and  does  not  vanish  in  mere  opportunism. 
I  speak  of  another  than  a  mere  tactical  op- 


OF   MARRIAGE  4§ 

portunism.  I  mean  the  opportunism  of 
sympathy  which  goes  lovingly  down,  not 
to  stay  down,  but  to  lift  up — the  oppor- 
tunism in  which  Christ  emptied  and 
humbled  Himself  in  the  Incarnation.  The 
ideal  principle  rears  the  ideal  community, 
and  issues  from  its  ideal  Head. 

Paul  did  not  feel  prevented,  in  dealing 
with  his  infant  churches,  from  meeting 
the  actual  situation  in  a  casuist  way  ; 
in  doing  which  he  allows  a  freedom  that 
Christ  was  not  called  on  expressly  to  name 
— though  Paul  also  spoke  about  marriage, 
the  Church,  and  Christ,  things  so  lofty  as 
we  find  in  Ephesians.  He  had  to  deal 
with  actual  cases,  with  what  would  now 
be  called  mixed  marriages,  between  a 
Christian  and  a  Pagan.  And  he  allows 
deliberate  desertion  to  be  a  ground  of  free- 
dom there  (1  Cor.  vii.  9),  though  he  did  not 
as  between  two  Christians.  Paul  had  to 
legislate  for  the  Church  as  Christ  had  not 
4 


50  THE    CHRISTIAN    VIEW 

— for  special  cases  in  it  at  least.  And 
he  uses  the  flexibility  of  the  spirit  and 
not  the  stiffness  of  the  letter.  He  was 
not  preaching  sub  specie  eternitatis,  but 
acting  as  a  casuist — episcopally  and  not 
apostolically .  And  so  the  Church  at  every 
historic  stage  must  act — spiritually,  flex- 
ibly, justly,  with  no  infallibility  in  the 
application,  but  only  in  the  principle. 

To-day  also  the  Church  has  to  decide 
how  to  apply  Christ's  principle  in  a 
Pauline  way.  It  has  to  decide,  the  pastor 
may  be  any  day  called  to  decide,  if  he  will 
marry  the  innocent  and  suffering  party 
of  a  divorced  pair,  where  the  conduct  of 
the  other  has  put  him  outside  the  Chris- 
tian pale,  and  shown  him  to  be  a  Pagan 
and,  worse,  an  apostate.  And  I  am 
bound  to  say,  so  far  as  my  judgment  goes, 
that,  while  I  am  not,  of  course,  bound  to 
marry  anybody,  and  am  free  to  be  guided 
by  the  circumstances  of  particular  cases 
after  due  inquiry,  I  do  not  feel  that,  as  a 


OF   MARRIAGE  51 

minister  of  the  Church,  I  am  prohibited 
from  complying  with  the  request.  I  none 
the  less  respect  the  scruples  of  those  who 
feel  they  are  forbidden. 

In  any  case  divorce  is  an  extreme,  a  con- 
fession of  failure,  and  everything  possible 
must  first  have  been  tried.  The  one  thing 
is  that  the  Church  should  only  make  such 
concessions  as  keep  its  ideal  clear  and  let 
it  act  slowly  on  the  public.  Every  con- 
cession has  to  be  in  the  final  interest  of 
the  Christian  ideal,  and  not  merely  of  the 
public  convenience.  And  the  question  is 
whether  the  only  means  of  doing  so  is 
for  the  Church  to  set  its  face  against 
divorce  in  all  circumstances,  or  whether  the 
witness  can  be  faithfully  borne  amidst  a 
certain  degree  of  practical  flexibility.  The 
answer  differentiates  two  great  conceptions 
of  the  Church.  One  thing  is  certain, 
the  Church  could  not  agree  to  recognise 
divorce  by  consent.  That  would  be  allow- 
ing the  parties  to  be  judges  in  their  own 


52  THE   CHRISTIAN   VIEW 

case.  And  it  would  practically  introduce 
temporary  marriage,  and  reduce  it  to  con- 
cubinage.    To  that  point  I  must  return. 

On  the  whole,  probably  the  Church 
should  stiffen  the  ideal  as  the  State  relaxes 
practice  in  this  matter  of  divorce.  It  is 
quite  possible  that  good  utilitarian  reasons 
should  be  shown  for  some  careful  extension 
of  legal  divorce.  That  is  for  the  public 
and  for  Parliament,  at  their  own  moral 
level.  But  every  such  step  confesses  that 
we  are,  protanto,  not  a  Christain  nation. 
And  the  Church  must  be  free  to  live  by 
her  own  Lord,  her  own  light,  and  her  own 
principles  in  the  matter,     (See  p.  54.) 

There  is  a  difficulty  in  the  way  of  state 
relaxation  which  many  feel,  and  which 
has  been  pressed  on  me  by  an  eminent 
prelate.  We  have  raised  the  State  to  a 
certain  approximation  to  the  Christian 
moral  ideal ;  are  we  to  allow  it,  even  to 
encourage   it,   to  go  back  by   extending 


OF   MARRIAGE  53 

facilities  for  divorce  ?  The  answer  is  two- 
fold. First,  that  the  State  may  have  been 
led  to  legislate  by  Church  ideals  ahead  of 
the  moral  resources  with  which  the  Church 
has  supplied  it,  and  therefore  the  present 
law  may  do  more  harm  in  causing  illicit 
unions  than  it  would  do  in  dissolving  the 
licit.  The  retreat  would  be  strategic. 
Or  second,  if  the  law  was  not  ahead  of 
the  moral  sense  of  the  voters  of  its  day, 
society  has  gone  back.  Our  moral  educa- 
tion has  not  kept  pace  with  the  growth  of 
civilisation,  and  the  law  is  inadequate  to 
the  moral  conditions  that  prevail  now. 
You  can  keep  down  the  number  of 
divorces,  but  perhaps  at  the  cost  of  in- 
creasing married  misery  and  demoral- 
isation, to  the  great  damage  of  family 
and  society. 

Especially  have  we  changed  in  this 
respect,  that  we  can  no  longer  treat 
Christ's  precepts  as  imperious  social  legis- 
lation for  the  public,  nor  even  as  legisla- 


54    CHRISTIAN    VIEW    OF   MARRIAGE 

tion  for  a  Church,  which  did  not  then 
exist;  but  they  must  be  regarded  as 
guidance  for  those  who  fulfilled  their 
conditions  by  such  a  personal  relation  to 
Him  as  makes  a  true  Church.  "  All 
men  cannot  receive  this  saying,  only 
those  to  whom  it  is  given."  And  given 
them  not  merely  by  nature,  but  by  the 
Holy  Spirit's  effect  in  their  spiritual 
power. 

In  all  this  I  feel  how  much  easier  it 
would  be  to  dogmatise  on  a  word  of 
Christ's  than  to  apply  the  changeless 
principle  of  His  Gospel  with  His  wisdom 
to  the  actual  moral  situation  of  each  hour. 

*;^*  Note  to  p.  52.  So  long,  that  is,  as  an  Established 
Church  do  not  punish  with  social  ostracism  those  whom 
it  cannot  repel  from  Communion  for  obeying  the  law  of 
the  land. 


THE    CHRISTIAN    VIEW    OF 
MARRIAGE — continued 


CHAPTER    V 

THE    CHRISTIAN   VIEW   OF   MAR- 
RIAGE  CONTINUED 

3.  As  Ethical  {the  Object  of  Marriage) 

A  S  to  the  object  of  marriage,  nobody, 
when  contemplating  marriage, 
ought  to  be  thinking  about  its  object. 
That  would  be  a  piece  of  pedantry. 
People  marry  because  they  must,  not 
because  they  should  ;  because  they  like 
each  other,  and  not  because  they  owe  a 
duty  to  the  public,  or  even  to  the  ideal. 
I  do  not  offer  advice  to  those  about  to 
marry,  or  those  who  want  to  marry.  We 
are  discussing  an  institution,  not  John 
or  Elizabeth — though  I  confess,  in  the 
by-going,  I  find  John  and  Elizabeth  more 

67 


58  THE    CHRISTIAN    VIEW 

interesting    than    institutions   which   are 
more  valuable. 

We  are  asking  what  is  the  function 
of  marriage  in  the  order  of  things.  If 
we  looked  no  wider  or  deeper  than  the 
elementary  necessities  of  the  State,  we 
should  say  it  was  to  provide  population, 
to  carry  on  both  the  nation  and  the  race. 
But  men  and  women  are  much  more  than 
pawns  in  the  State.  A  man  is  much 
more  than  a  case  of  the  race  ;  he  is  not 
like  a  single  copy  of  a  book,  whose  damage 
or  destruction  would  not  affect  the  book 
at  all.  And  the  most  populous  state, 
were  it  on  no  higher  level  than  population, 
would  only  mean  multitudinous  degener- 
acy, a  "  populous  No." 

We  have  to  face  the  question  why  the 

race  should  go  on,  and  to  meet  it  with  a 

/  moral   answer.     Both   State   and   family 

i  are    there    for    moral    objects.     All    the 

great    institutions    of    society    are    there 

in    the    long    run    for    the    development 


OF   MARRIAGE  59 

of  moral  personality.  And  marriage  es- 
pecially has  this  for  its  end — the  educa- 
tion of  the  moral  soul,  private  and  public, 
the  production  of  a  race  worth  multi- 
plying. To  marry  for  that  purpose  is 
priggery.  If  marriage  has  not  that  effect, 
it  is  a  failure. 

Marriage  is  there  for  the  conquest  of 
that  elemental  egoism  which  is  such  a 
useful  servant  and  such  a  fatal  master. 
In  plainer  language,  but  less  exact,  it  is 
there  to  educate  people  out  of  their 
native  selfishness  and  impatience.  Not 
that  it  has  that  effect  on  all,  though  it  is 
all  that  some  have  to  do  that  for  them. 
We  can  have  the  egoism  of  the  couple, 
or  of  the  family.  We  may  have  met  cases 
where  the  members  of  the  family  were 
not  serving  society,  but  made  a  close 
ring,  or  a  hard  ball,  in  the  midst  of  society 
and  against  it.  Their  object  was  to  lay 
society  under  tribute  to  the  family,  as 
far   as   possible.     It   was    family   booty. 


60  THE    CHRISTIAN   VIEW 

And  their  conduct  had  the  maternal  note 
of  believing,  and  trying  to  make  others 
believe,  that  there  was  no  such  family 
in  the  world. 

Living  for  one's  own  family  alone  has 
been  said  to  be  no  better  than  living  for 
one's  own  health.  But  it  is  not  quite 
as  bad  as  that.  When  we  have  had  our 
amusement  out  of  that  spectacle,  we 
should  remember  that  the  family  affec- 
tions and  prejudices  are  all  that  the  poor 
people  had  between  them  and  absolute 
egoism.  You  have  Burns,  with  a  judg- 
ment which  goes  to  a  finer  form  of  the 
extreme,  saying : 

*'  To  make  a  happy  fireside  clime 
For  weans  and  wife — 
That's  the  true  pathos  and  sublime 
Of  human  life." 

But  that  is  no  more  true  than  the  other 
extreme.  Life  has  issues  far  more  grand 
and  moving  than  domesticity.  But  if 
it  is  an  error,  it  is  a  very  wholesome  one. 


OF   MARRIAGE  61 

There  is  a  lower  depth  even  than  famihsm. 
It  is  where  one  member  of  the  family  makes 
even  his  family  tributary  to  his  own 
egoism  ;  and  he  goes  out  of  life  having 
learned  nothing  from  it  but  that  he  is  a 
self,  and  not  a  mere  thing — ^yet  only  a 
centripetal  self  so  far,  a  self  whose  next 
stage  must  be  a  severe  reconstruction  on  a 
new  centre.  Egoism  cannot  bear  egoism. 
Two  of  a  trade  cannot  agree.  And  two 
egoisms  mean  one  divorce. 

The  question  is  asked,  among  some  of 
the  Socialists  for  instance,  if  marriage  be 
a  private  or  a  social  affair.  Some  would 
say  of  it,  as  of  religion,  that  it  is  Privat- 
sache  ;  and  all  that  society  has  to  do  is 
to  relieve  the  parents  from  the  care  of  the 
children,  and  to  bring  these  up  in  public 
nurseries  (which  would  more  properly 
be  described  as  infantry  barracks).  But 
marriage  is  neither  a  wholly  private  nor 
a  wholly  public  interest.  It  turns  upon 
personal  affection,  but  (as  we  have  seen) 


62  THE    CHRISTIAN    VIEW 

it  has  some  of  its  greatest  effects  and 
purposes  far  beyond  personal  happiness. 
Happiness  may  only  be  sought  under 
moral  conditions.  No  one  has  a  right 
to  happiness  who  knows  nothing  of  obe- 
dience, and  cares  nothing.  No  happiness 
should  be  without  responsibility — latent 
at  least.  And  especially  it  is  responsible 
to  the  society  which  makes  happiness 
secure  by  its  order  and  shelter. 

Marriage  means  family  cares.  It  means 
the  wise  sacrifice  of  the  parents  to  the 
children,  and  the  wfse  service  to  society 
of  both  as  a  family.  The  family  not 
only  provides  citizens,  but,  what  is  far 
more,  a  school  of  citizenship.  Citizens 
are  made,  and  not  only  born.  The  social 
question  is  far  greater  than  the  population 
question.  It  concerns  the  moral  quality 
that  is  reared  in  the  population.  And 
the  first  school  of  this  is  the  family.  It 
has  to  make  not  simply  men,  but  fellow 
men.     And  nothing  can  do  this  like  family 


OF   MARRIAGE  63 

life.  Homes  which  are  mere  firms  for 
the  couple,  or  hotels  to  the  young  people, 
are  of  less  than  no  social  value.  They 
must  be  centres  of  moral  culture :  of  cul- 
ture not  in  ethics,  but  in  personality,  and 
in  its  growth  by  fidelity,  service,  and  sacri- 
fice. Citizens  must  be  reared  by  those 
who  contribute  them;  and  that  can  only 
be  in  the  moral  atmosphere  of  family  life, 
and  not  in  the  unstable  climate  of  mere 
brotherhoods,  nor  in  the  rough  and  tumble 
of  partisan  conflicts  or  faction  fights. 

The  children  are  there  not  simply  to 
be  a  motive  for  family  industry  as  heirs  of 
the  family  property,  but  to  be  worthy 
agents  of  social  production.  They  are  not 
legatees  of  the  family  estate  when  it  is 
cut  up,  but  heirs  of  the  best  moral  culture 
that  family  life  represents  ;  a  culture 
that  is  not  cut  up  as  it  is  multiplied, 
but  is  the  grand  patrimony  and  growing 
unity  of  the  race.  The  child  is  neither 
the  mere  reversionary  of  the  family  estate 


64  THE   CHRISTIAN   VIEW 

nor  a  piece  of  it.  He  is  a  soul  entrusted 
to  the  family,  to  the  parents  especially, 
to  be  reared  to  freedom  moral  and  re- 
ligious. Maxima  debetur  pueris  reverentia 
semper.    Yes,  semper. 

The  Fifth  Commandment  is  very  neces- 
sary now,  because  respect  for  parents 
is  in  decay.  But  why  is  it  in  decay  ? 
Because  the  commandment  has  a  con- 
verse. Honour  thy  boy  and  girl  that 
f  their  days  may  be  strong  in  the  land  the 
Lord  thy  God  giveth  thee.  Parents  ought 
to  honour  their  children,  and  not  merely 
fondle  them,  and  not  merely  maintain 
them,  and  not  merely  punish  them.  Be- 
cause that  aspect  of  the  matter  has  been 
neglected,  parents  need  to  be  taught  to 
honour  the  child,  whom  they  too  often 
treat  with  the  extremes  both  of  neglect 
and  indulgence,  as  a  nuisance  or  a  darling. 
Some  families  would  be  more  valuable  if 
they  had  more  mutual  respect,  even  at 
the  cost  of  some  superfluous  affection. 


OF  MARRIAGE  65 

Considering  the  effect  of  marriage  on 
the  moral  nature  both  of  parents  and, 
especially,  of  children,  it  comes  home  to 
us  that  the  marriage  question  is  really  a 
part  of  the  education  question.  Genera- 
tion and  education  are  morally  insepara- 
able.  The  parent  is  the  chief  moral 
teacher.  The  family  is  not  merely  a 
coupler,  but  a  transmitter ;  not  only  a  link 
between  the  generations,  but  the  living 
vehicle  to  the  future  of  all  the  best  moral 
wisdom  which  such  parentage  gathers 
from  the  past.  It  is  in  our  children  that 
the  best  of  all  we  have  been  made  by 
experience  lives  on  for  the  future. 

From  the  religious  point  of  view  the 
object  and  effect  of  marriage  is  very  great 
and  deep.  Nothing  goes  so  deep,  except 
contact  with  Christ  Himself,  in  the  shaping 
and  toning  of  the  soul.  This  takes  place! 
in  countless  subtle  ways,  many  of  them- 
below  the  surface  of  our  immediate  con- 
sciousness ;  but  there  come  times  and 
5 


/ 


66    CHRISTIAN   VIEW   01^   MARRIAGE 

crises  when  these  subhminal  secrets  of  the 
heart  are  revealed.  But  I  do  not  dwell  on 
that,  because  it  is  perhaps  more  appro- 
priate to  the  pulpit,  where  it  might 
oftener  appear.  And  I  have  already 
touched  it. 

It  might  be  added  here  that  from  this 
moral  standpoint  the  medieval  view  of 
woman  was  defective,  and  its  chivalry 
semi-barbarous.  It  represented  an  idolatry 
rather  than  a  service,  a  passion  rather  than 
an  affection,  an  erotic  (as  I  put  it)  rather 
than  an  ethic.  And  we  fmd  its  hollow 
interior  illustrated  in  the  double  morality 
still  found  in  connection  with  the  medieval 
survival  of  militarism,  where  the  treat- 
ment of  one  class  of  women  is  a  sheer 
Pharisaism  compared  with  that  of  another. 


THE    MATTER    OF    SUBORDI- 
NATION 


CHAPTER    VI 

THE   MATTER   OF   SUBORDINATION 

TT  is  impossible  to  speak  of  the  Chris- 
tian  idea  of  marriage  without  taking 
some  note  of  the  woman's  subordination 
which  seems  to  be  involved  in  it,  and 
which  is  resented  by  so  many.  The 
resentment  need  not  surprise  us  in  an  age 
when  revolt  has  taken  the  place  among 
the  virtues  which  used  to  be  held  by 
the  other  extreme  of  resignation. 

In  this  connection  I  would  make  the 
following  observations. 

1.  Our  moral  principles   as   Christians 

must   flow   far   less   from   precepts   than 

from  the  revealed  nature  of  the  Christian 

God.     Our  moral  foundations  are  in  the 

holy   mountain  ;    all  our  springs  are  in 

69 


70  THE    MATTER 

Him.  Now  the  nature  of  that  God  is 
Father,  and  Son,  and  Holy  Spirit. 
Father  and  Son  co-exist,  co-equal  in  the 
Spirit  of  holiness,  i.e,  of  perfection.  But 
Father  and  Son  is  a  relation  inconceivable 
except  the  Son  be  obedient  to  the  Father. 
The  perfection  of  the  Son  and  the  per- 
fecting of  His  holy  work  lay,  not  in  His 
suffering,  but  in  His  obedience.  And,  as 
He  was  Eternal  Son,  it  meant  an  eternal 
obedience  ;  for  the  supreme  work  of  Christ, 
so  completely  identified  with  His  person, 
could  not  be  done  by  anything  which 
was  not  as  eternal  as  His  person. 

But  obedience  is  not  conceivable  with- 
out some  form  of  subordination.  Yet  in 
His  very  obedience  the  Son  was  co-equal 
with  the  Father  ;  the  Son's  yielding  will 
was  no  less  divine  than  the  Father's 
exigent  will.  Therefore,  in  the  very  nature 
of  God,  subordination  implies  no  in- 
feriority. It  is  as  divine  as  rule,  for  it  is 
self-subordination   on    an    infinite   scale ; 


OF   SUBORDINATION  71 

it  is  not  enforced.  It  is  sacrifice,  it  is 
not  mere  resignation.  It  is  no  slavery, 
but  willing  service.  And  if  man  is  to 
be  holy  as  He  is  holy,  our  self-subordina- 
tion to  each  other  is  not  necessarily  in- 
feriority, nor  need  obedience  be  slavery. 
There  is  an  obedience  bound  up  with 
the  supreme  dignity  of  Christian  love,  so 
that  where  most  love  is,  there  also  is 
most  obedience. 

So  little  is  it  true  when  Kant  says  that 
for  moral  purposes  it  is  indifferent  whether 
we  believe  in  a  Trinitarian  God  or  a 
Unitarian.  For  the  individual  it  may 
matter  less,  but  for  society  it  means  much 
whether  self-subordination  is  intrinsically 
divine  and  truly  God-like. 

2.  In  some  things  the  man  is  subordi- 
nate. In  the  earliest  nurture  of  the  child 
he  is  quite  subordinate,  and  the  mother 
has  a  great  start  of  the  father  in  moulding 
those  first  years  to  which  our  last  come 


72  THE   MATTER 

circling  round  in  such  an  affecting  and 
influential  way. 

3.  Objection  is  taken  to  the  precept 
of  wifely  submission  in  Eph.  v.  22. 
"  Wives  submit  yourselves  to  your  own 
husbands  as  unto  the  Lord." 

Now,  one  might  first  ask  whether  the 
happiest  and  most  influential  homes  are 
not,  on  the  whole,  those  where  this  principle 
reasonably  prevails.  But  leaving  that,  I 
offer  these  remarks : 

(1)  What  a  woman's  heart  and  her 
interest  crave  is  love  much  more  than 
lead  ;  and  the  same  passage  teaches  the 
man  to  love  his  wife  at  least  as  much  as 
himself,  i,e.  with  his  whole  self. 

(2)  The  verse  before  urges  the  members 
of  the  Church  to  submit  themselves  to 
each  other  in  the  fear  of  God.  So  that 
the  precept  to  the  wife  is  no  more  than 
a  particular  application  of  the  general 
precept  given  to  every  Christian,  male  or 


OF   SUBORDINATION  78 

female  ;  which  therefore  enjoins  also  due 
submission  in  its  own  kind  of  the  Chris- 
tian husband  to  the  Christian  wife.  It 
means  mutual  and  complementary  for- 
bearance, concession,  courtesy,  sacrifice. 
(3)  The  submission  is  as  to  the  Lord. 
That  is  to  say,  it  is  under  those  moral 
conditions  which  inhere  in  the  Christian 
principle,  and  which  forbid  the  love  of  rule 
and  pre-eminence  for  its  own  wilful  sake. 
It  is  not  clear  that  absolute  obedience 
is  enjoined  to  a  domineering  tyrant.  The 
husband  contemplated  is  head  only  in  a 
sense  analogous  to  that  in  which  Christ  is 
head,  i,e,  in  the  spirit,  not  of  right  or 
power,  but  of  love  and  sacrifice.  And 
the  husband  contemplated  is  to  love  his 
wife  as  Christ  loved  the  Church,  by 
giving  himself  for  it.  If  the  wife  give 
herself  to  the  husband,  an  equal  obliga- 
tion to  give  himself  is  created  for  the 
husband,  if  their  love  endure  in  the 
higher  love  of  Christ  common  to  both. 


74  THE   MATTER 

4.  And  this  leads  to  the  recognition 
of  limits  to  the  submission.  It  could  not 
go  to  the  length  of  renouncing  Christ  at 
the  husband's  call  if  he  were  a  Pagan  and 
a  bigot  (1  Cor.  vii.  15).  And  if  the  Pagan 
husband  desert  his  wife,  she  is  not  bound 
to  him  any  more.  She  is  free.  It  is  not 
unqualified  obedience.  It  is  not  absolute. 
Therefore  it  is  not  slavery.  It  is  sub- 
mission under  the  conditions  of  the  Church 
and  the  Kingdom,  and  especially  under 
the  conditions  of  love  which  has  service 
for  its  principle. 

5.  The  wifely  obedience  which  was 
normal  in  Judaism  and  Paganism  is  taken 
up  and  kept,  but  it  is  also  put  on  such 
a  new  base  as  applies  it  equally  to  both 
parties,  and  transforms  it  from  an  outward 
law  to  a  willing  sympathy.  Service  and 
sacrifice  become  now,  in  Christ  crucified, 
the  divine  and  common  principle  of  love, 
in  which  the  wife  is  invited  to  lead.    What 


OF    SUBORDINATION  75 

is  the  objection  to  the  woman  leading  in 
sacrifice,  as  the  divine  principle  of  moral 
dignity,  in  the  cross,  as  the  natural  ex- 
pression of  love  in  practice,  and  as  the 
divinest  principle  of  life  ?  Why  should 
the  Christian  woman  not  aim  at  being  ad- 
vanced in  a  common  yielding  in  Christ  ? 

6.  This  spirit  of  service  and  sacrifice 
is  a  most  needful  thing  to  turn  the  stoic 
into  the  Christian,  the  moral  egoist  into 
the  humane  brother. 

To-day  we  are  much  preoccupied  with 
the  cult  of  Personality,  the  religion  which 
cuts  ethic  off  from  religion,  and  reduces 
the  Church  to  an  ethical  society.  Many 
people  are  obsessed,  in  forms  coarse  or 
fine,  by  their  own  personality  and  what 
is  due  to  it.  Accordingly  they  are  the 
victims  of  recalcitrance,  or  of  self-respect, 
or  of  self-realisation.  Their  supreme  duty 
is  that  which  they  consider  they  owe  to 
the  integrity  and  independence  of  their 


76  THE   MATTER 

own  individuality,  and  especially  to  their 
moral  personality.  Their  principle  is 
moral  self-culture,  and  everything  is  sub- 
ordinated to  that.  Even  their  sacrifice  has 
its  eye  on  that.  It  is  moral  egoism.  It  is 
done  to  promote  their  moral  development; 
for  the  good  of  what  they  consider  their  soul. 

It  is  an  aim  that  needs  conversion. 
It  would  make  society  not  a  fraternity 
in  any  sense,  but  a  conglomerate  of  moral 
atoms  bursting  with  self-respect,  who 
have  taken  up  their  moral  culture  as  a 
profession  in  life. 

This  frame  of  mind  may  or  may  not 
need  to  be  well  shaken,  but  it  does  need 
to  be  Christianised  in  order  to  be  .really 
moralised.  It  is  an  insufferable  excel- 
lence till  it  is  converted,  till  its  eye  is 
taken  off  its  moral  self  and  all  the 
priggery  of  it,  and  people  are  taught  to 
leave  their  prickly  independence,  to  save 
their  soul  by  losing  it,  and  find  them- 
selves by  forgetting  themselves. 


OF   SUBORDINATION  n 

7.  It  may  be  asked  whether  the  spirit 
of  true  obedience  and  subordination,  of 
being  forward  to  serve,  does  violence  to 
woman's  nature,  and  prevents  her  finding 
her  true  self.  In  so  far  as  that  nature  is 
different  from  man's,  does  it  suffer,  is  it 
perverted,  by  having  service  for  its  first 
principle  ?  Is  it  prevented  from  coming 
to  itself  ?  Are  the  most  willing,  courteous, 
serviceable,  devoted  women,  spoiled 
women  ?  Do  we  shrink  from  women  of  that 
temper,  as  if  they  were  traitors  to  their  sex 
and  nature  ?  There  are  women  we  shrink 
from,  but  are  they  these  ?  The  higher 
woman  is,  the  higher  is  her  freedom 
If  it  is  claimed  that  she  is  finer  than  man, 
so  much  the  finer  is  her  freedom.  But  the 
high  and  fine  kind  of  freedom  comes  in  ser- 
vice and  by  it.  And,  if  woman  is  normally 
at  her  highest  and  finest  in  marriage,  if 
it  is  the  married  and  not  the  single  that  is 
the  type  of  the  sex,  and  gives  its  law  and 
freedom,  her  freedom  as  a  sex  must  stand 


:i 


78  THE   MATTER 

on  such  pre-eminent  sacrifice  as  is  there. 
That  is  the  line  on  which  a  woman  finds 
her  true  self.  And  that  is  the  line  of  her 
true  leadership.     The  last  shall  be  first. 

8.  It  may  be  said  that  this  obedient 
spirit  in  women  marked  but  an  early  and 
cruder  stage,  even  in  Christianity,  and  that 
it  was  destined  to  be  shed,  and  to  fall  away 
like  slavery,  as  Christianity  came  to  itself. 
The  answer  is  that  the  case  of  slavery 
is  not  analogous.  The  principle  of  any 
human  creature  beingthe  absolute  property 
of  another  is  quite  fatal  to  Christianity, 
and  must  be  outgrown.  But  nowhere 
in  the  New  Testament  is  woman  regarded 
as  property,  and  certainly  not  in  marriage. 
Wherever  she  is  so  regarded,  Christianity 
must  bring  a  radical  change.  In  so  far 
as  woman's  position  anywhere  is  slavery 
Christianity  must  alter  it. 

But  service,  obedience,  is  not  slavery, 
except  where  people  at  any  age  have  not 


OF   SUBORDINATION  70 

outgrown   their   teens.     And    to   lead    in 
sacrifice  is  the  true  eminence  in  Christ, 
i.e,    in  the  last  moral  resort.      Sacrifice 
is  the  man's  Christianity  as  well  as  the 
woman's,   if   there   be   neither   male   nor 
female  in  Christ  but  both.      The  Christian 
form  of  subordination  is  sacrifice,  which  is 
the  genius  of  love,  a  woman's  glory  more 
than  her  hair,  and  the  very  kingly  heart 
of  Christ.     The  promise  to  obey  is  but!/ 
the  promise  of  the  sacrifice  which  love/l 
cannot  help,   if    it  seek  not  its  own,   is-'  I 
kind,   does   not   behave   itself   unseemlyj  I 
and  never  fails.  ^ 

Womanhood  always  suffers  where  duties 
are  postponed  to  rights,  service  to  aggres- 
sion, and  sacrifice  to  assertion.  And  to 
sneer  at  such  a  valuation  of  moral  powers 
is  to  despise  Christ  and  renounce  the  cross. 


LEASEHOLD    MARRIAGE 


A  newspaper  has  recently  appeared  among  us,  which  is 
largely  advertised  in  the  streets,  and  has,  I  am  told,  a  grow- 
ing circulation.  It  is  written  by  women  of  high  education, 
who,  generally  speaking,  sign  their  names  to  what  they  write. 
The  paper  shows,  in  some  respects,  conspicuous  ability,  and 
is,  I  believe,  eagerly  read.  The  doctrine  of  the  economic 
independence  of  women,  which  is  everywhere  part  and 
parcel  of  the  suffrage  movement,  leads,  in  the  case  of  this 
ably  written  paper,  to  strange  results.  Motherhood  outside 
marriage,  by  means  of  temporary  unions  for  the  purpose  ; 
its  formal  recognition  by  society,  and  the  conditions  on 
which  the  "  new  maids  "  of  the  futiure  will  claim  and  enforce 
it;  arguments  against  the  "immoral"  permanence  of  mar- 
riage ;  complete  freedom  of  union,  under  the  guidance  of 
passion,  between  men  and  women  ;  and  other  speculations 
and  contentions  with  regard  to  the  relations  of  the  sexes — 
especially  in  the  letters  from  correspondents — such  as  could 
not  be  reproduced  in  your  columns  ;  these  matters  and  the 
handling  of  them  shed  a  flood  of  light  on  certain  aspects  of 
the  "  woman's  movement."  This  newspaper  does  not  stand 
alone,  nor  are  these  aspects  a  mere  negligible  quantity. — 
From  a  letter  by  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward  in  the  *'  Times  "  of 
June  19,  1912. 


CHAPTER    VII 

LEASEHOLD    MARRIAGE 

rpHERE  are  two  chief  phases  of  the 
marriage  question  as  a  public  or 
parliamentary  question.  One  I  have 
touched — divorce.  The  other  raises  issues 
much  more  dangerous.  It  is  the  question 
of  the  legalisation  of  terminable  or  pro- 
bationary unions :  what  have  been  called 
leasehold  marriages.  These  are  really  no 
more  than  partnerships  at  will.  It  is 
pleaded  that,  as  marriage  is  primarily 
a  matter  of  consent,  the  consent  is  ter- 
minable. The  same  consent  that  makes, 
breaks.  If  people  can  agree  to  come 
together,  they  can  agree  to  part.  And 
it  is  urged  they  should  often  part  for 
the  good  of  the  soul  in  either  case,  or, 

83 


84  LEASEHOLD   MARRIAGE 

as  it  would  be  put,  in  the  interest  of  the 
free  moral  personality.  The  arrangement 
may  end  at  the  instance  of  either  side — 
with  due  provision,  as  the  law  might 
determine,  for  the  offspring. 

As  if  anything  could  be  a  due  pro- 
vision for  children  but  the  joint  and 
loving  care  of  the  parents!  How  should 
you  expect  a  child  to  feel,  how  do  you 
think  its  moral  growth  would  be  affected 
by  its  feeling,  towards  a  parent  that  had 
passed  through  several  hands,  either  be- 
fore or  after  its  birth  ?  And  what  is  the 
exact  idea  ?  Is  it  monogamy  while  it 
lasts  ?  Or  may  either  party  have  another 
brief  menage  going  on  at  the  same  time  ? 

This  is  an  idea  which  has  a  far  larger 
hold  of  cultivated  but  non- Christian  so- 
ciety than  we  are  often  allowed  to  realise. 
Abroad,  the  propaganda  has  gone  much 
farther  than  with  us,  and  especially  its 
advocacy  by  women  in  the  interest  of 
unwedded    motherhood,    deliberate    and 


LEASEHOLD    MARRIAGE  85 

legalised — the  right  to  a  child.  But  you 
cannot  see  much  of  such  society,  in  this 
country  also,  without  perceiving  how 
attractive  the  notion  is  to  many  of  both 
sexes  to-day.  I  observed,  lately,  that 
the  most  aggressive  German  book  in  this 
interest  was  advertised  in  an  English 
translation. 

If  more  facility  for  divorce  is  pressed 
in  the  interest  of  the  poorer  classes,  this 
is  often  urged  in  the  interest  of  the 
better-to-do,  whose  fortune,  leisure,  and 
half-culture  make  their  tastes  more  va- 
grant, and  their  independence  of  society 
more  easy  and  assertive.  The  plea  begins 
by  recognising  the  difficulties  and  even 
tragedies  which  we  all  admit  in  connec- 
tion with  marriages  unhappy  and  yet  in- 
dissoluble. It  may  start  also  with  what 
seems  a  worthy  concern  for  the  dignity 
of  love,  and  it  urges  that  it  is  degradation 
when  a  union  continues  from  under  which 
the   love   has   ebbed   and   fled.     But   its 


86  LEASEHOLD    MARRIAGE 

way  out  of  the  difficulties  is  downwards, 
and  not  upwards.  Its  interest  is  indivi- 
dual (not  to  say  selfish)  ;  it  is  not  social. 
And  its  concern  for  love  gravitates,  for 
want  of  moral  lift  in  it,  to  become  facility 
for  passion.  It  has  more  erotic  than  ethic. 
It  is  the  ruin  in  the  end  of  the  moral 
element  in  love,  because  it  is  not  only  the 
ruin  of  the  family,  but  it  destroys  the  moral 
development  of  the  parent's  personality. 
For  fidelity  can  be  educated  by  fixity.  It 
is  not  fidelity  if  it  only  last  with  liking. 

The  suggestion,  of  course,  is  absolutely 
unchristian,  and  mostly  anti-Christian. 
It  goes  back — I  do  not  here  say  from 
Christian  principle,  which  many  would 
reject — but  from  Christian  civilisation, 
which  is  the  greatest  thing  civilisation  has 
yet  achieved.  And  it  can  be  met  with 
no  sympathy  either  from  Christianity  or 
society,  except  in  so  far  as  it  is  sometimes 
an  honest  but  unprincipled  effort  to 
cope  with  evils  which  exercise  us  all. 


LEASEHOLD   MARRIAGE  87 

I  will  only  mention  a  few  points  of 
criticism. 

1.  It  is  said  that  it  would  tend  to 
diminish  vice.  If  it  did,  it  would  be  at 
the  cost  of  all  the  dignity  that  belongs 
to  marriage  by  the  moral  element  that 
gives  the  institution  permanence.  Be- 
sides, it  is  very  doubtful  if  it  would  have 
such  an  effect  in  the  long  run.  It  is  prac- 
tically polygamy,  only  consecutive  and 
not  simultaneous.  And  it  is  a  polygamy 
that  ends  at  will.  What  kind  of  men  and 
women  would  be  manufactured  at  last 
by  such  an  institution  ?  The  weaker  sex 
would  more  and  more  return  to  its  Oriental 
position  as  property  ;  the  stronger  would 
become  a  pasha.  It  means  the  degrada- 
tion of  sexual  relations ;  and  that  is  both 
the  soul  and  root  of  prostitution.  It 
stamps  woman  as  inferior,  like  all  poly- 
gamy ;  and  it  brands  her,  like  all  mere 
passion,  as  a  mere  means,  while  the  man 
is  an  end  to  himself.     There  is  no  moral 


88  LEASEHOLD   MARRIAGE 

development  for  woman  there.  It  is 
slavery.  And  if  it  is  said  that  the 
woman  is  as  free  to  end  the  relation  as 
the  man,  practically  that  is  not  so.  For 
woman  is  more  constant  than  man ; 
she  clings,  as  man  does  not,  to  the  chil- 
dren ;  and  she  is  also  handicapped  for 
all  livelihood  outside  the  family.  And  so 
she  would  mostly  be  the  victim.  Always 
outside  fixed  marriage,  the  woman  stands 
to  be  victimised  most. 

2.  As  the  woman  is  naturally  more 
constant  than  the  man,  it  is  the  woman 
that  would  be  the  chief  sufferer  by  such 
an  arrangement.  And  in  the  relation  of 
the  sexes  she  has  too  much  to  suffer  as 
it  is.  The  proposal  reverts  to  the  pre- 
Christian  idea  of  woman.  Polygamy  and 
slavery  go  together,  whether  the  polygamy 
be  consecutive  or  simultaneous.  Mono- 
gamy for  life  is  a  great  evolution  in  the 
interest  of  the  weaker  sex,  out  of  poly- 


LEASEHOLD   MARRIAGE  89 

gamous  conditions,  whose  mischief  is  the 
divided  interest  of  the  man  in  the  woman. 

Besides,  prostitution  is  largely  due  to 
the  great  change  in  social  conditions 
which  prevents  marriage.  Let  these  be 
altered,  even  at  much  cost  to  the  existing 
order,  but  do  not  let  the  marriage  idea 
be  debased.  Facilitate  the  better  dis- 
tribution of  the  fruits  of  industry,  pro- 
mote economic  independence,  and  make 
marriage  more  possible.  Reduce  the  stan- 
dard of  luxury  in  women,  and  cultivate  a 
simpler  life.  This  change  is  certainly  very 
great,  but  it  is  far  less  than  the  change  we 
discuss.  Our  evils  cannot  be  cured  by 
tampering  with  the  sanctity  of  marriage. 
As  has  been  said,  "  You  do  not  cure 
theft  by  abolishing  property." 

I  have  described  leasehold  marriage  as 
polygamy,  only  polygamy  successive  and 
not  simultaneous.  And  I  should  like 
to  add  here  that,  as  between  the  two 
forms  of  polygamy,  it  is  the  successive 


90  LEASEHOLD    MARRIAGE 

that  is  more  deadly  to  society,  because 
it  is  more  destructive  to  family  life. 
Islam  is  more  stable  than  a  society  of 
legalised  liaisons  would  be ;  yet  Islam 
is  less  for  Humanity  than  Israel,  because 
of  the  very  different  position  of  the  wife. 
Nothing  but  permanent  monogamy  is 
compatible  with  family  life  and  all  it 
means  for  society. 

The  demand  for  a  relaxation  of  the 
marriage  bond,  and  especially  for  termin- 
able marriages  is  largely  promoted  by  the 
selfish  and  vagrant  influence  of  the  man 
at  the  cost  of  woman.  And  it  is  the 
woman's  interest  that  is  protected  by  the 
dignity  and  fixity  of  marriage,  in  so  far  as 
the  two  interests  are  put  in  competition. 

We  may  perhaps  look  at  it  in  this  way : 
The  growth  of  Humanity  is  twofold — 
in  quantity  and  in  quality.  On  the  one 
hand  the  race  grows  in  numbers  and 
is  prolonged  in  time ;  on  the  other  hand 


LEASEHOLD    MARRIAGE  91 

it  grows  in  power,  resource,  civilisation, 
culture.  On  the  one  hand  it  spreads 
over  the  face  of  the  earth,  in  space,  and 
extends  through  history,  in  time ;  on 
the  other  it  dilates,  so  to  say,  it  becomes 
ampler,  fuller,  richer  in  mental  mastery 
and  spiritual  content.  It  is  fruitful,  mul- 
tiplies, and  replenishes  the  earth  ;  and 
it  acquires  more  and  more  dominion  over 
the  creatures.  It  grows  in  size,  and  it 
grows  in  civilisation. 

Now,  each  of  these  forms  of  growth 
means  burden,  labour,  and  sorrow. 
But  the  burden  of  the  one  falls  chiefly 
on  the  woman,  and  the  burden  of 
the  other  on  the  man.  On  the  woman 
chiefly  falls  the  burden  of  population, 
on  the  man  chiefly  that  of  civilisa- 
tion. I  am  speaking  of  the  chief  stress, 
observe.  And,  in  the  matter  of  con- 
tinuing the  race,  the  chief  burden  falls 
on  the  woman.  It  is  upon  the  one 
organism    rather    than    the    other    that 


92  LEASEHOLD    MARRIAGE 

nature  lays  the  labour  and  sorrow  in 
this  respect.  And  it  is  the  woman  there- 
fore that  requires  special  consideration 
in  the  institutions  that  have  most  to  do 
with  the  continuity  of  the  race.  The 
institution  which  has  charge  of  this  in 
particular  is  marriage.  And  the  only 
form  of  marriage  which  really  harmonises 
the  two  functions,  and  specially  protects 
and  compensates  the  woman  in  her  func- 
tion, is  fixed  and  monogamous. 

Monogamy  organised,  guarded,  and 
sanctified  by  Church  and  State  is  in  the 
woman's  interest  especially.  She  has 
most  to  lose  in  the  slackening  of  it.  To 
tamper  with  it  is  to  unroof  the  fabric  in 
which  maternity  has  its  shelter.  It  is  a 
suicidal  thing  that  the  male  interest,  which 
makes  for  the  race's  power,  should  pro- 
mote an  ethic  which  destroys  the  female 
interest  of  the  race's  continuation ;  that 
the  male  interest  of  power  should  acquire 
the  vice  of  power — selfishness — at  the  cost 


LEASJ:H0LD   MARRlAGli  98 

of  the  female  interest  of  existence,  and 
the  sacrifice  it  entails.  If  the  powerful 
man  discourage  monogamy  in  the  in- 
terest of  his  selfishness  he  is  pulling 
down  the  house  in  which  alone  even 
power  can  continue  to  live  and  grow. 

It  is  often  said  that  women  live  in  the 
moment,  and  that  it  is  men  who  have  the 
sense  of  implicates  and  consequences ; 
that  women  are  engrossed  with  particulars 
and  personalities,  and  men  look  before 
and  after  to  universals  and  to  general 
justice.  But  here,  at  least,  the  case  is 
otherwise.  The  man  lives  in  the  moment, 
it  is  the  woman  that  lives  in  the  world  of 
consequences.  And  it  is  the  woman, 
therefore,  that  has  the  prime  interest  in 
that  social  morality  which  compels  the 
instinct  of  the  moment  to  come  under 
the  obligations  created  by  consequences. 
Monogamy  is  the  charter  of  maternity,  the  ' 
bridle  on  vagrant  selfishness,  the  shelter 
of  the  weak,  the  stay  of  the  fickle,  and 


94  LEASEHOLD   MARRIAGE 

the  one  institution  for  converting  erotic 
chaos  into  a  moral  order  of  society. 

And  the  lamentable,  dreadful  fact  that 
so  many  women  are  forward  to  promote 
terminable  marriage,  or  even  single  ma- 
ternity, is  really  a  tribute  to  the  social 
security  that  permanent  monogamy  has 
given.  Monogamous  marriage  has  sunk 
so  deep  into  society,  and  made  the 
position  of  women  so  secure,  that  such 
advocates  can  form  no  idea  of  what 
society  would  be,  especially  for  their  sex, 
if  their  programme  got  its  head.  They 
do  not  know  life.  The  sex,  which  has 
such  experience  of  consequences,  has  little 
imagination  for  consequences  ;  and  these 
women  cannot  envisage  the  situation  their 
theories  would  produce.  They  sap  mar- 
riage under  the  shelter  of  its  roof.  And 
they  can  only  be  forgiven  (as  one  says) 
because  they  know  not  what  they  do. 

3.  It  is  said  that  it  is  motherhood  that 


LEASEHOLD   MARRIAGE  95 

IS  holy,  not  wifehood.  But  I  shall  shortly 
show  that  under  this  system  motherhood 
must  either  cease  or  suffer.  I  only  say 
here  two  things.  First,  that  the  revolt 
of  the  sex  means  revolt  against  wifehood 
rather  than  motherhood,  because  the  man 
and  woman  make  a  claim  on  each  other's 
egoism  which  is  not  made  by  the  child. 
The  child  can  even  flatter  it,  as  needing  a 
protector  ;  but  the  spouse  certainly  limits 
it.  And,  if  the  worst  evil  be  thought  to  be 
such  limitation  of  egoism,  wifehood  is  sure 
to  be  resented.  Second,  all  motherhood  is 
not  holy.  To  say  that  it  is,  is  a  piece  of 
sentimental  naturalism  belonging  to  the 
inferior  fiction,  and  leading  us  to  a  social 
morass.  Some  motherhood  should  be  the 
object  of  deep  compassion  and  kindness, 
but  not  of  respect — as  the  fatherhood  in 
it  deserves  a  social  scourge.  No  society 
can  be  founded  or  maintained  upon  the 
pity  which  is  so  precious  in  our  private 
and  personal  relations. 


THE    WOMAN'S   PROTEST 


CHAPTER    VIII 

4.    THE    woman's    protest 

T>UT  it  is  not  only  the  best  in- 
terests of  the  woman  that  pro- 
test against  these  terminable  marriages, 
but  her  finest  instincts.  Whatever  may 
be  the  case  with  individuals,  all  that  is 
most  womanly  in  the  sex  turns  against 
such  ethic.  The  delicacy  and  dignity  of 
woman  resent  it.  The  finer  her  soul  is, 
so  much  the  more  does  she  measure  the 
higher  aspects  of  the  great  and  unreserved 
committal  she  makes  in  marriage ;  and 
she  feels  it  so  much  that  she  has  courage 
to  make  it  only  on  the  foundation  of  a 
tender  and  sacred  faith  that  it  is  for  life. 
A  life  for  a  life.  What  she  gives  is  her 
whole  life,   her  whcJe  pe^rsc>nality_in  its 


100         THE    WOMAN'S    PROTEST 

most  central  and  sacred  sanctuary  ;  and 
that  should  only  be  given  for  life.  The 
fixity  of  marriage  for  life  is  only  the  social 
counterpart  of  the  great  spiritual  unity 
of  the  moral  personality  in  its  sacred 
surrender.  It  is  often  said  that  marriage 
may  be  an  episode  for  a  man  but  for  a 
woman  it  is  her  all.  Therefore  her  nature 
demands  that  it  be  once  for  all. 
'  A  woman  deceived  in  this  matter  has 
a  wound  that  never  closes.  The  tragedy 
does  not  go  out  of  her  life,  whether  she 
cover  it  or  not.  If  she  do  not  cover  it,  if  she 
rebel,  if  she  separate  and  take  her  way  by 
herself,  she  may  be  smitten  so  inwardly 
and  sacredly  that  rebellion  often  seems 
a  coarse  term,  and  public  championship 
of  injured  wifehood  a  vulgar  thing. 

In  a  certain  novel  one  such  woman 
learns  utterly  to  despise  her  husband, 
and  she  takes  steps  to  free  herself.  A 
circle  of  her  friends  wish  to  celebrate  her 
for  her  bold  action,  but  she  turns  away, 


THE    WOMAN'S    PROTEST  101 

stung  and  disgusted.  "  A  horrible  grief," 
says  the  writer,  "  came  over  her.  These 
people  had  no  idea  of  the  abyss  of  her 
sorrow.  The  last  surrender  of  soul  and 
bodv  did  not  mean  for  them  the  sacra- 
mental  thing  it  did  for  her.  Something 
in  them  must  have  long  gone  blunt  and 
dull.  Did  they  ever  know  what  it  meant 
to  drop  the  last  veil  of  the  personality, 
'  laying  flesh  and  spirit  in  his  hands  '  ? 
Everything  in  her  rose  up  against  them. 
'  It  was  my  holy  fire,'  she  said,  '  my 
white  flame.  And  to  let  myself  be  feted 
about  it  all,  to  be  treated  as  if  I  were  but 
a  principle — it  is  silty,  it  is  mad,  it  is 
insulting.  Have  they  no  eyes  to  see  how 
I  suffer  ?  '"     . 

All  that  rises  to  such  a  height  in 
womanhood,  all  that  so  finely  and  sacredly 
feels,  rises  also  to  protest  against  any 
ethic  of  marriage  which  makes  it  but 
a  passionate  contract  instead  of  a  sacra- 
mental  union   with   a   permanent   mate. 


102         THE    WOMAN'S    PROTEST 

If  the  true  inwardness  of  it  is  so  delicate 
and  abiding  for  the  one  party,  it  is  not 
less  so  for  the  other.  You  cannot  have  a 
double  ethic  here.  This  feeling  of  the 
woman  strikes  the  note  of  the  whole 
relation.  Life-committal  for  both  is  of  its 
essence  and  idea.  Though,  of  course,  at  the 
present  social  stage,  for  the  hardness  of 
our  heart,  practical  exigencies,  due  to 
human  weakness  or  wickedness,  may  pre- 
scribe divorce  carefully  allowed  under  the 
sacred  authority  of  State  or  Church. 

But  let  us  note  clearly  that  it  is  divorce 
from  a  bond  which  was  contemplated  as 
permanent,  which  is  in  its  idea  permanent, 
which  is  permanent  as  an  institution; 
whereas  the  legal  recognition  of  unions  ter- 
minable by  consent  would  alter  the  inner 
nature  and  idea  of  the  institution  itself. 
It  publishes  to  the  world  the  conviction 
of  society  that  the  principle  of  marriage 
is  fleeting  in  its  nature,  that  it  is  a  love 
which  need  not  be  expected  to  be  lasting 


THE    WOMAN'S    PROTEST  103 

or  faithful.  And  that  is  a  principle  that 
could  not  be  socially  advertised  without 
stirring  up  all  that  makes  man  most 
worthy  and  woman  most  womanly  to 
protest  and  condemn.  If  the  institution 
led  us  to  think  so  of  love,  if  it  was  based 
on  such  an  idea  of  it,  the  whole  conception 
of  love  would  slowly  sink,  "  half  dead  to 
know  that  it  could  die." 

5.  The  fact  is,  that  here  the  instinct  of 
the  true  woman,  educated  by  millenniums 
of  experience  of  motherhood,  points  to 
the  sound  condition  of  racial  welfare. 
The  racial  instinct  is  in  her,  not  only 
purer,  but  truer.  And  the  finest  and 
subtlest  feeling  holds  the  real  clue  and 
the  real  power  in  the  case.  If  we  speak 
of  natural  selection,  the  secret  of  the 
truly  natural  selection  in  the  continua- 
tion of  the  race  is  more  vitally  seized  by 
the  woman.  Her  instinct  says  that  the 
race's    renovation    from    generation    to 


104         THE    WOMAN'S    PROTEST 

generation  must  be  taken  more  seriously 
from  generation  to  generation,  and  its 
principle  made  more  stable. 

It  may  be  true  that  women  are  more 
interested  in  individuals  than  in  groups, 
or  even  principles  ;  but  it  is  also  true 
.  that  they  demand  the  whole  individual 
j  for  life.  And  jealousy  is  but  the  seamy 
I  side  of  that  sound  instinct.  A  woman's 
affections  may  be  individual,  but  her 
relation  to  that  individual  is  properly 
monopolist,  however  free.  Individual  as 
the  passion  may  be,  she  is  social  enough 
to  read  in  the  bond  more  than  passion,  a 
moral  permanency  beyond  passion  ;  and 
she  shapes  the  institution  for  more.  Her 
interest,  her  preoccupation,  may  be  in 
the  present ;  but  her  instinct,  her  pre- 
sentiment, her  divination,  is  for  the  future. 
All  this  means  that  as  an  institution 
marriage  looks  beyond  the  individual 
or  his  moods,  and  has  its  great  reference 
to  the  race  and  its  future. 


THE    WOMAN'S    PROTEST  105 

But  terminable  marriage   is  based  on 
the    opposite    principle.     It    regards    the 
individual    and    not    the    race ;     and    it 
regards   the   individual   only   on   his   im- 
pulsive   side.     It  bends    the     institution 
from  the  service  of  the  race  to  that  of 
the  individual,  or    even    to    that    of    his 
fleeting  predilections.     It   is   not   ethical 
but  erotic.     Individual  happiness,  or  even 
the  egoism  of  two,   is  not  the    supreme 
principle  of  marriage.     That  is  a  principle 
which  regards  first  the  welfare  of  society 
and  its  happiness.     Now  the  first  social 
interest  of  society  is  the  family,  i.e.   not 
the  parents  alone  and  their  enjoyment, 
but  the   child   also   and  sacrifice  for   it ; 
not  the  present,  but  the  future.  Posterity 
does   as   much    for   the   ideal   society   as 
ancestry.      And     the    worst     indictment 
against    terminable    marriage    is    that    it 
breaks  up  this  family  idea.  It  ends  in  racial 
suicide,  or,  if  not,  it  demolishes  fatherhood, 
and  to  that  extent  damages  childhood,  \ 


106  THE   WOMAN'S    PROTEST 

Nature  is  more  mighty  than  man's 
device,  and  nature  will  secure,  on  the 
whole,  that  the  mother  clings  to  the  child 
when  she  has  agreed  to  part  from  its 
father,  or  when  he  discards  both  from 
his  concern.  Fatherhood  thus  goes  out 
of  the  child's  life,  even  if  motherhood 
remains.  It  also  goes  out  of  the  religion 
of  a  race  so  reared,  which  would  be  left 
with  but  a  motherly  God.  We  estimate 
highly,  indeed,  the  effect  of  the  mother 
on  men — on  great  men,  and  all  men. 
But  has  the  experience  of  that  influence 
been  gained  under  the  conditions  now  pro- 
posed— of  easy  desertion  by  the  father  ? 

Often,  it  is  true,  the  widow  as  mother 
has  to  do  what  she  can  to  supply  the 
lack  of  the  father,  and  to  magnify  his 
name  in  the  memory  of  the  children. 
But  how  is  she  to  do  that  for  a  father 
whom  she  has  exchanged  for  another,  or 
one  who  has  parted  with  her  because  one 
or  both  were  tired  of  it,     It  is  hard  to 


THE    WOMAN'S    PROTEST  107 

estimate  the  influence  of  a  father  in  the 
house,  even  if  the  mother  do  all  the 
explicit  training.  And  while  the  mother 
is  stamped  on  the  earliest  years,  the  father 
is  stamped  on  adolescence,  and  gives  the 
child  its  personality  among  the  world  of 
men. 

Besides,  what  removes  the  father  in 
this  way  impairs  also  the  care  of  the 
mother.  The  whole  system  sacrifices  thej 
child  to  the  parents,  and  shows  that  they 
are  not  really  parents  but  selfish  erotics.- 
(Throughout  I  am  not  using  the  word' 
in  the  grossest  sense.)  For  unless  all 
children  are  taken  to  be  brought  up  by 
the  State  in  public  nurseries,  terminable 
union  means  that  the  mother  is  left  with 
the  children  ;  and  her  natural  doom  of 
bearing  them  alone  is  prolonged  into  the 
unnatural  burden  of  rearing  them  alone. 

The  rich,  of  course,  could  make  pro- 
vision as  to  funds  for  this  purpose;  but 
the  change  proposed  rouses  problems  no 


108  THE    WOMAN'S    PROTEST 

funds  can  solve.  And,  besides,  it  would 
not  affect  the  rich  only,  and  its  effect 
must  be  calculated  upon  its  working  in 
the  mass.  And  that  would  mean  that 
the  mother  would  be  taken  away  from  the 
very  thing  left  her  to  do.  She  would 
have  to  do  what  is  done  with  evil  con- 
sequences in  the  mills — she  would  have 
to  go  to  work  merely  to  maintain  the 
children  she  should  educate.  She  would 
be  cast  more  than  ever  into  the  economic 
struggle,  not  with  other  women  only,  but 
with  men  more  or  less  free  from  her 
responsibilities.  And  either  she  would 
break  down,  or  her  training  of  the  family 
would. 

It  is  so  fatal  to  society  to  tamper  with 
the  fixity  of  marriage,  because  it  is  most 
fatal  to  the  weak  elements  whose  defence 
a  moral  society  ought  to  be — to  the 
woman's  womanly  quality  and  the  child's 
moral  growth. 


A   CONSERVATIVE    SANCTUARY 


CHAPTER    IX 

6.    A    CONSERVATIVE    SANCTUARY 

SOCIETY,  therefore,  ought  to  be 
immovable  in  this  matter.  The 
farther  in  we  go  upon  the  sacred,  subtle, 
and  even  sub -conscious  parts  of  our  nature, 
so  much  the  nearer  we  come  to  the  central 
shrine  where  the  waves  of  change  scarcely 
reach.  We  come  to  the  diamond  axis  upon 
which  all  change  revolves.  We  reach 
the  conservative  sanctuary  which  makes 
all  progress  safe,  because  it  harbours  and 
gathers  in  repose  the  creative  power  that 
makes  progress  at  all  possible.  It  is  a 
region  beyond  the  reach  of  our  new 
schemes  and  systems,  and  the  most  sacred 
parts  of  our  nature  abut  upon  it.     Upon 

it  give  those  windows  of  our  being  which 

111 


112      A   CONSERVATIVE    SANCTUARY 

open   as   magic   casements   upon   mystic 
seas. 

In  this  region  reside  the  slow  influences 
that  mould  us  in  marriage  and  family. 
These  are  powers  that  easily  escape  our 
chronic  levity,  and  what  Carlyle  called 
our  snigger  at  the  universe.  We  cannot 
readily  weigh  them,  for  they  are  not 
entirely  in  the  domain  of  our  conscience  ; 
they  are  often  beneath  it.  Of  all  social 
institutions  in  the  natural  realm  the 
family  is  that  which  has  the  most  deep 
and  unconscious  effect  on  us.  How  else 
is  it  that  death  and  loss  reveal  to  us  in 
heart  agony  the  depth  of  a  relation  which 
was  growing  up,  we  know  not  how,  amid 
all  the  routines  and  trifles  of  day  after 
day,  and  closing  in  upon  our  heart,  as  it 
were,  with  strong  but  transparent  walls, 
which  were  for  us  as  if  they  were  not, 
till  we  found  ourselves  cut  to  the  bone 
among  their  splinters.  Amid  all  the 
happy  give-and-take  of  common  life,  and 


A    CONSERVATIVE    SANCTUARY      113 

common  joys,  and  common  cares,  we  were 
being  subtly  bound  with  a  network  of  ties 
which,  when  they  are  torn  out,  take  our 
hearts  in  bleeding  pieces  with  them. 

It  has  taken  society  a  very  long  time 
to  grow  to  this  discipline.  Ages  and  ages 
of  social  evolution  are  registered  in  our 
submission  to  such  fine  bonds,  and  our 
lacing  by  such  silken  threads.  And  the 
fabric  is  as  firm  as  the  slow  deposit  of 
coral  islands  upon  the  ocean's  bed,  which 
both  rise  to  the  top  and  spread  to  each 
other,  till  an  archipelago  becomes  a  con- 
tinent. You  cannot  trace  here  the  swift 
progress  you  freely  mark  elsewhere.  We 
are  here  among  the  great,  solemn,  and 
abiding  things.  So  that,  if  ever  this 
institution  had  to  be  changed,  it  would 
require  a  combination  of  all  the  best  and 
greatest  forces  of  the  whole  race,  all  its 
most  spiritual  forces,  working  from  its 
deepest  heart. 

The  social  programme-makers  are  here 
8 


114      A    CONSERVATIVE    SANCTtJARV 

no  more  than  pigmies  pottering  at  the 
base  of  Olympus.  To  dissolve  the  great 
divine  Triad  of  Father,  Mother,  Child, 
would  require  a  force  equal  at  least  to 
that  which  has  made  society  itself.  It 
is  far  beyond  the  theories  of  social  system- 
mongers,  or  the  heresies  of  intellectuals. 
Monogamy  is  not  an  artificial  institution 
forced  down  on  mankind,  but  a  spiritual 
institution  rising  out  of  it. 

And,  in  any  case,  whatever  changes 
come  must  be  so  slow  as  to  be  almost 
imperceptible  at  any  one  point  of  time. 
The  quest  is  all  too  new  and  young  yet 
to  affect  such  hoary  and  venerable  prac- 
tice. ;  Marriage  is  a  far  more  permanent 
institution  than  any  other,  j  Nothing  can 
affect  it  which  is  attempted  from  either 
the  man's  side  alone  or  the  woman's. 
It  could  be  changed  only  from  the  inter- 
action of  both  for  their  action  on  the 
child,  and  on  the  future  of  which  the 
child  is  trustee. 


A    CONSERVATIVE    SANCTUARY      115 

Women,  at  least,  should  realise  that 
they  can  do  nothing  in  this  direction  by 
writing  on  erotic  lines,  but  only  by  making 
the  sex  a  greater  and  greater  factor  in 
the  ethic  of  the  race.  And  this  they  can 
never  do  by  devoting  themselves  to  love 
as  a  free  passion,  as  an  explosive  under 
the  pillars  of  society,  but  to  love  as  a 
moral  power  carrying  society  ;  not  to 
the  love  that  looses,  but  the  love  that 
binds  ;  not  to  the  love  that  releases  for 
enjoyment,  but  to  the  love  that  commits 
to  sacrifice.  And  all  that  women  win 
upon  other  fields  of  life  will  culminate 
and  be  registered  in  their  effect  upon  the 
ethics  of  love.  All  the  progress  they 
may  make  has  its  value  only  as  it  tells 
for  their  growth  in  power  upon  the  race 
at  its  centre  of  delicate  dignity  and 
moral  taste. 

The  growing  power  of  the  life  of  love 
lies  in  the  line  of  its  moral  refinement ; 
and,  if  the  age  of  chivalry  and  idolatry 


116      A    CONSERVATIVE    SANCTUARY 

towards  women  is  gone,  it  is  because  we 
are  rising  to  the  age  of  a  truer  sanctity 
in  women.  The  chivahy  men  feel  to 
them  can  only  continue  if  it  rise,  if  it  is 
uplifted  by  the  sanctity  women  feel  in  | 
themselves  and  their  surrender.  Thev 
must  be  in  a  position  and  in  a  mood  to 
dwell  less  upon  love's  fantasy  and  more 
on  its  sanctity.  They  must  be  educated 
less  by  romances  that  tickle  them  and 
more  by  spiritual  powers  that  rule  them. 
And  they  must  strengthen  men  in  that 
direction.  For,  as  one  writer  says, 
"  people  make  too  much  of  mere  love, 
both  in  modern  life  and  modern  art  ; 
and  that  is  at  the  bottom  of  so  much  of 
the  sickliness  and  weakness  of  our  time." 


LOVE'S    DIGNITY   AND    SINCERITY 


CHAPTER   X 

7.  love's  dignity  and  sincerity 

T  EASEHOLD  marriage  is  said  to 
be  in  the  interest  of  the  reality 
of  sexual  relations.  Under  the  proposed 
conditions  people  could  separate  without 
fuss  when  they  grew  incompatible  and 
the  relation  became  hollow.  It  is  asked, 
'  Do  we  increase  the  sanctity  of  marriage 
by  putting  it  above  its  truth  and  reality  ? 
We  only  create  Pharisaism.' 

The  answer  is  (1)  that,  if  marriage  could 
be  dissolved  by  consent,  there  would 
then  be  no  motive  to  discipline  those 
faults  that  easily  become  magnified  into 
incompatibility.  The  idea  of  mutual 
discipline  would  not  enter  into  marriage 
at   all — as   to   so   many   it   never    does, 

119 


120  LOVE'S    DIGNITY 

They  plead  they  must  be  themselves,  and 
not  immolate  their  individuality.  There 
would  be  no  thought  of  marriage  acting 
as  a  school  of  moral  reality. 

(2)  The  truth  and  reality  of  mar- 
riage would  too  easily  be  identified  with 
the  life  of  mere  passion  or  romance  ;  and 
the  decay  of  that  flush  would  soon  become 
a  charter  for  vagrancy  and  its  hollo wness. 

(3)  The  fixity  of  marriage  is  the  moral 
condition  for  converting  the  decay  of  pas- 
sion into  the  growth  of  real  affection, 
especially  under  Christian  culture  and 
power. 

(4)  Is  there  no  Pharisaism,  no  unreality, 
when  human  beings,  who  were  made 
with  a  moral  nature  for  supremely  moral 
issues,  disguise  the  fact  even  to  them- 
selves and  masquerade  in  a  light  vesture 
of  passion  or  preference  alone  ?  The  man 
supremely  ruled  by  passion  is  a  fraud  to 
human  nature.  Man,  it  has  been  said,  is 
more    than   an    erotic   process,   and   this 


AND    SINCERITY  121 

more  means  obligation,  responsibility,  the 
freedom  of  his  soul,  against  the  vagrancy 
of  the  moment's  appetite  and  the  slavery 
of  chance  desires.  And  if  he  ignore  this, 
he  is  not  only  living  in  unreality,  he  is  not 
only  severed  from  the  great  moral  whole 
which  gives  him  his  reality,  but  he  is 
crumbling  and  hollow  within,  and  the 
whole  economy  of  his  soul  is  going  to 
pieces.  He  may  pass  through  moral  prig- 
gery  to  Pharisaism  of  his  own  subtle  kind. 
It  is  not  love  that  is  free  with  him,  it  is 
not  the  great  love,  but  the  small  passion, 
which  dries  up  in  its  own  heat.  What 
is  free  is  the  infidelity  of  his  egoism, 
and  the  love  of  impatient  change.  And 
for  a  man  to  live  in  that  freedom  is  to 
live  in  a  falsity  and  a  Pharisaism  to  his 
true  nature  and  best  self. 

(5)  It  is  impossible  that  two  legitimate 
forms  of  marriage  could  exist  alongside 
without  one  of  them  being  rated  as 
inferior,  and  so  treated  in  society.     What 


122  LOVE'S   DIGNITY 

would  happen  if  that  one  were  permanent 
marriage  ?  And  if  it  were  the  other, 
the  object  of  the  propaganda  I  discuss 
would  be  lost.  It  wants  the  concubine 
to  be  as  well  received  as  the  wife. 

(6)  The  plea  of  the  old  ethic,  it  will 
have  been  seen,  is  sometimes  adopted  by 
the  new.  It  is  owned  that  the  object  of 
marriage  is  the  development  of  the  moral 
personality.  But  it  is  pleaded  that,  in 
a  vast  number  of  cases,  life-marriage  not 
only  destroys  the  moral  personality,  but 
prevents  a  union  that  would  develop  it. 

The  answer  is  manifold,  and  has  in 
part  been  given  already. 

(a)  Reflect  on  the  educative  influence, 
through  ages,  of  the  idea  of  an  institution. 
The  idea  of  life-marriage  not  only  moulds 
a  character  of  self-restraint  and  service, 
but  also  slowly  lifts  through  ages  the 
idea  and  tone  of  social  life. 

(b)  There  are  moral  influences  avail- 
able, especially  in  Christianity,  which  can 


AND    SINCERITY  123 

sanctify  the  disappointment  of  many 
unsatisfactory  marriages  for  both  parties, 
and  even  tap  a  new  spring  of  affection. 
The  love  ceasing  to  be  instinctive  passion 
changes  into  a  new  application  of  Chris- 
tian love  and  moral  kindness. 

(c)  The  cure  would  be  worse  than  the 
disease — especially  so  long  as  legal  separa- 
tion is  possible  as  a  remedy.     It  is  not 
mere  love  that  is  the  source  of  the  moral 
education,  but  love  with  the  moral  ele- 
ment   of    fidelity — holy    love.     But    the 
new  ethic  rests  on  the  idea  of  freedom, 
on   the   mere   resentment   of   restraint — 
'  I     must    be    my    true,    complete,    and 
harmonious  self.'      That  is  what  is  known 
as  the  cult  of  personality   turned  cant. 
It  is  the  morbid  passion  for  a  superior 
egoism.      It  is  the  Pharisaism  of  the  new 
cult.     As  if  "  ^twere  growing  like  a  tree, 
all   round,   that   made   man   better   be." 
It   cultivates   a   forest   of   self-contained 
pines,  not  a  society  of  generous  men  with 


124  LOVE'S    DIGNITY 

a  boundless  contiguity  of  shade.  It  is 
the  aristocratic  ethic  of  individual  culture 
at  any  price  ;  it  is  not  the  nobly  demo- 
cratic ethic  which  rears  the  individuals 
as  members  one  of  another.  Freedom  is 
certainly  one  condition  of  moral  discipline, 
but  the  source  of  discipline  is  not  freedom, 
but  control,  obedience,  experience.  True 
freedom  is  the  effect  of  discipline,  not 
its  cause. 

The  advocates  of  this  svstem  seem,  in 
some  respects,  to  lack  knowledge  of  the 
world,  or  the  insight  that  interprets  it. 
That  many  women  are  said  to  favour  it 
shows  it  to  be  based  largely  on  lack  of 
knowledge  of  life.  It  is  the  fantasy  of 
incorrigible  Utopians,  sheltered  idealists, 
or  inexperienced  optimists. 

The  best  that  can  be  said  for  this  new 
ethic  turns  upon  the  cult  of  personality. 
But  the  cult  of  personality  without  the 
higher  cult  of  authority  is  the  cult  of 
mere  self-will.     And  one  cannot  conceive 


AND    SINCERITY  125 

of  any  moral  authority  compatible  with 
such  free  love.  It  can  be  prosecuted 
only  by  the  repudiation  of  authority. 
No  moral  authority  could  sanction  it, 
and  remain  an  authority.  No  real 
authority  could  be  so  fatal  to  society  as 
such  liberty  would  be. 

8.  Leasehold  marriage  is  fundamentally  , 
wrong  because  it  starts  from  the  postu- 
late  that  love  is  in  its  nature   a  ficklel    / 
thing,    and    it    asks    for    deliberate    and- 
public  recognition  of  the  fact.     It  seeks  | 
to  reorganise  society   in  the  interest   of 
the  doctrine  that   love   is   in   its   nature 
fugitive.     And  yet  it  claims  to  act  in  the 
name  and  interest  of  a  love  which  fixed 
marriage    tends    to    debase.     Could    you 
have  a  stable  society  on  the  foundation 
of  a  soluble  base  ?      We  do  believe  that 
society  is  on  a  stable  base  on  the  whole, 
whatever    revolutions    may    take    place. 
But  we  could  not  continue  to  trust  that, 


126  LOVE'S    DIGNITY 

if  we  came  to  think  that  the  chief  cement 
of  society  was  such  a  poor  adhesive. 
We  should  feel  society  was  but  gummed 
together  and  not  built.  Love  is  half 
dead  when  it  begins  by  admitting,  and 
even  parading,  that  it  can  die.  I  have 
already  alluded  to  the  educative  effect 
on  the  public  mind  of  the  conception  of 
love  which  is  imbedded  in  indissoluble 
monogamy.  It  is  the  great  register  of 
the  moral  progress  of  society. 

9.  It  has  been  seen  that  it  is  a  vice  of 
the  leasehold  system  that  ilP*  tends  to 
substitute  erotic  for  ethic ;  to  treat 
passion  devoid  of  the  moral  element  as 
the  justification  of  a  union,  and  even  as 
its  sanctification.  And  here  I  should 
like  to  make  some  very  relevant  protest 
against  the  extent  to  which  the  interests 
of  the  heart,  whether  sentimental  or 
passionate,  are  allowed  to  monopolise  the 
attention  of  the  young,  and  form  them 


AND    SINCERITY  127 

at  the  plastic  time.  It  may  be  in  the 
way  of  rehgion,  or  it  may  be  in  the  way 
of  literature  or  the  drama,  or  it  may  be 
by  social  intercourse.  The  idea  of  love, 
which  is  only  too  ready  to  monopolise  the 
years  of  adolescence,  is  encouraged,  and 
even  forced,  to  the  destruction  of  intelli- 
gence on  the  one  hand  and  of  conscience  on 
the  other,  to  say  nothing  of  reverence  for 
love  itself.  Just  as  in  religion  we  have 
a  mawkish  culture  of  charity  and  urbanity 
which  makes  men  indifferent  to  either 
truth  or  justice,  so  you  have  an  atmo- 
sphere of*  sentiment  or  a  world  of 
passion  which  fills  the  mind  to  the  ex- 
clusion of  the  nobler  and  firmer  concerns  of 
character. 

Jowett  of  Balliol  protested  against  the 
extent  to  which  the  thoughts  and  imagina- 
tions of  youth  were  occupied  with  the 
love  interests,  especially  through  poetry, 
as  if  nothing  were  really  interesting  to 
the  young  but  the  opposite  sex.     He  was 


128  LOVE'S    DIGNITY 

not  thinking,  nor  am  I,  of  the  vicious 
side  of  it.  He  meant  the  obsession  by 
sentiment  which  is  innocent  enough,  to 
the  neglect  of  other  and  greater  concerns  ; 
the  hypertrophy  of  this  side  of  things 
in  both  sexes,  and  especially  in  men, 
which  destroys  the  virile  note,  puts  upon 
religion  itself  a  subjective  and  sickly  cast, 
and  destroys  the  force  of  its  protest  for 
moral  issues.  What  is  the  public  value  of 
the  moral  protests  which  are  raised  from 
soft  religion  ?  Who  attends  to  the  public 
ethic  of  sweet  sentimentalists  ?  Obsession 
of  this  kind  should  be  countered  by  the 
promotion  of  sport,  the  earnestness  of 
education,  the  provision  of  some  positive 
moral  education,  the  rescue  of  the  Univer- 
sities from  being  mere  social  opportuni- 
ties, the  opening  of  careers  to  women, 
their  invitation  into  social  activities,  and 
the  dropping  of  the  coaxing,  and  even 
coddling,  note  on  the  part  of  the  churches 
in  dealing  with  the  young. 


AND    SINCERITY  129 

By  many  such  things  might  such  an 
obsession  be  qualified  and  corrected.  For 
the  worst  of  it  is  that  even  when  the 
interest  of  the  one  sex  in  the  other  is 
quite  natural  and  innocent,  yet,  if  it  is 
made  almost  the  whole  concern,  it  pro- 
duces a  soil  and  climate  which  the  supre- 
macy of  passion  finds  but  too  congenial 
as  soon  as  a  fiery  temptation  comes. 
You  pile  up  tinder  for  any  spark.  What 
is  being  done,  even  by  religion,  for  the 
moral  education  of  youth  as  compared 
with  its  popular  appeal  to  the  sympa- 
thetic and  impulsive  ?  And  is  the  result 
as  valuable  as  the  product  is,  say,  in 
"Captains  Courageous,"  where,  without 
a  woman  in  the  process  at  all,  a  little 
horror,  caught  in  time,  is  brought  up  by 
man's  hand  and  God's  sea  to  be  the  man- 
liest of  men. 


9 


1 


THE    EFFECT    OF    LITERATURE 


CHAPTER    XI 

THE   EFFECT   OF   LITERATURE 

TT7HAT  I  say  has  a  special  bearing 
on  literature,  and  on  the  literature 
of  fiction  in  particular.  I  am  not  for  the 
moment  discussing  novel-reading  as  mere 
fictional  hypertrophy.  I  am  not  thinking 
of  the  over-development  of  the  imagina- 
tive side  of  character  at  the  cost  of  the 
intelligent  or  the  practical.  I  am  not  con- 
cerned for  the  moment  with  the  statistics 
of  libraries  as  to  the  excess  of  novels 
issued  over  what  is  called  more  solid 
reading.  I  quite  recognise  that  the  in- 
cessant tickling  of  the  imagination  and 
the  sympathies  must  be  bad  for  both  ; 
and  there  is  the  old  argument  about  the 
waste    on    imaginary   cases    of   that  pity 

133 


134    THE    EFFECT    OF    LITERATURE 

which  should  have  inspired  action  to  help 
actual  cases.     But  I  leave  that  aside. 

Moreover,  I  recognise  and  I  prize  the  im- 
mense number  of  stories  and  poems  whose 
educative  influence  on  the  affections  can 
only  be  good — unless  they  make  us  forget 
that  there  are  other  things  that  need  educat- 
ing than  the  affections,  for  the  very  sake  of 
the  affections  themselves,  that  knowledge, 
nolessthanfeelingjis  required  for  theheart's 
just,  full,  and  reasonable  life.  It  is  de- 
moralising for  affection  to  be  made  to  think 
so  much  about  itself,  just  as  it  is  a  bad 
religion  that  is  always  thinking  and  talking 
about  religion  ;  and  it  is  the  preachers'  peril. 

What  I  am  thinking  of  is  the  pre- 
occupation of  this  imaginative  literature 
which  forms  the  staple  of  young  reading 
with  the  love  interest.  My  complaint 
is  against  the  abuse  of  even  pure  fiction 
which  never  takes  the  reader  out  of  the 
region  of  sexual  sentiment.  And  my 
fear  is  that  preoccupation  with  such  fiction 


THE    EFFECT    OF    LITERATURE     135 

creates  a  social  atmosphere  in  which  it  is 
too  easy  to  become  engrossed  with  bad 
fiction — fiction  which  no  censorship  could 
repress  but  which  tends  wrong.  Tendency 
here  is  more  serious  than  teaching.  And 
all  writing  tends  wrong,  however  correct, 
which  promotes  in  any  way  the  idea,  which 
I  call  erotic,  that  passion  is  its  own  law, 
is  the  one  thing  that  matters  in  life,  and 
is  the  real  foundation  of  the  union  of  sex. 

It  is  a  great  calamity  that  such  educa- 
tion as  the  heart  receives  owes  so  much 
more  to  fugitive  literature  than  to  the 
Church  or  the  family  at  the  present  hour. 
Here  again  we  should  speak  with  care. 
For  novels  are  now  a  part  of  education, 
and  there  are,  of  course,  no  few  favourites 
that  are  not  only  perfectly  healthy,  but 
unconsciously  educative  in  the  soundest 
way.  They  betray  an  author  no  less 
wise  and  kind  as  a  mentor  than  happy 
as  a  story-teller.     But   these  are   apt  to 


136    THE    EFFECT    OF    LITERATURE 

be  regarded  as  not  strong  enough  food 
for  the  emancipated  and  forthright.  The 
worst  of  the  hterary  treatment  of  this  sub- 
ject is  that  happy  marriage  is  no  literary 
asset.  Itdoes  not  lend  itself  to  acute  literary 
effect.  If  we  were  guided  only  by  the 
poetry,  fiction,  or  drama  of  the  day  (and 
I  am  thinking  of  an  area  much  wider  than 
England),  we  might  conclude  that  there 
were  few  other  interests  for  a  man  or 
woman  than  love,  especially  irregular  love, 
and  but  few  happy  marriages  as  the  result. 
I  do  not  say  for  a  moment  that  fiction 
should  not  handle  such  subjects.  Fiction 
presents  or  interprets  life,  and  they  play 
a  powerful  part  in  life.  But  they  are 
exceptional  and  solemn  tragedies.  And 
one  objects  to  their  becoming  a  daily 
entertainment,  as  novel  after  novel  is  read 
turning  on  that  motive,  or  plays  are  seen 
— novels  and  plays,  too,  in  which  the 
solemnity  of  the  matter  is  stripped  away, 
and  the  subject,  becoming  an  exploitable 


THE    EFFECT    OF    LITERATURE     137 

idea,  acquires  a  pedestrian,  or  even  vulgar 
note,  to  tickle  the  groundlings'  curiosity  or 
fill  the  idlest  hour.  Or  it  may  be  that  the 
wit  is  hard,  cynical,  and  irresponsible,  while 
the  ethic  is  offensively  anti-Christian. 

Of    course    there    are    many    unhappy 
marriages,   often   due  to  the  poverty   of 
social  opportunity^  or  the  crudit}^  of  our 
social  stage  of  progress,  or  to  that  bad 
education  of  the  heart  of  which  I  speak. 
There  are  many  marriages  which  do  not 
continue  the  romantic,  rhapsodic,  Byronic 
idea  of  love  which  makes  such  an  element 
in    the    fiction    of    women    for    women. 
Are  they  therefore  failures  ?     Married  life  ! 
is  often  ruined  by  the  notion  that  the  ideal  \ 
marriage  should  be  found  ready-made,  that   ' 
two  people  should  expect  to  settle  down 
into  it  as  they  would  into  the  enjoyment « 
of    a    house    presented    to    them    ready  \ 
decorated   and   furnished    for  a   lifetime,  \ 
and  that  its  happiness  should  come  and    * 
remain  without  effort  or  discipline. 


138     THE    EFFECT    OF    LITERATURE 

The  truth  that  needs  teaching,  and  is 
not  taught,  is  that  the  ideal  marriage, 
like  the  ideal  personality,  grows  ;  that 
the  true  appropriation  of  this  gift  is 
the  heart-culture  of  a  lifetime.  It  does 
not  drop  ripe  into  our  mouth.  It  is 
the  fruit  of  difficulty,  pain,  sacrifice,  and 
it  is  not  quite  unacquainted  with  friction. 
Reckon  on  such  things,  and  turn  them 
to  moral  account.  Tiffs  are  not  tragedies. 
It  is  childish,  as  soon  as  the  clouds  begin, 
to  drop,  to  think  that  heaven  is  burst. 
A  happy  marriage  depends  on  the  way 
these  things  are  handled,  and  not  on  their 
entire  absence.  And  a  mistake  is  not 
irreparable. 

Of  course  statistics  are  not  possible 
on  such  a  subject.  But,  when  all  is  said, 
there  is  a  huge  average  of  those  happy 
and  affectionate  marriages  which  it  is  the 
literary  fashion  to  call  humdrum  because 
they  do  not  make  copy,  because  they 
have    not    thrills,    because    the    literarv 


THE    EFFECT    OF    LITERATURE     139 

interest  lies  so  largely  in  the  tragic  or 
sensational,  or  because  it  still  labours  with 
the  old  stage  direction  that  marriage  ends 
all.     Marriage  begins  all. 

The  number  of  plays  or  novels  that 
turn  upon  the  breach  or  the  failure  of 
marriage  would  make  us  bad  pessimists 
if  we  based  our  diagnosis  of  actual  society 
on  what  the  writers  present.  If  the  young 
are  encouraged  to  think  too  much  about 
licit  affection,  the  married  are  encouraged 
to  an  interest  too  great  in  illicit.  But, 
after  all,  the  theatre  is  not  England,  the 
literary  circle  is  not  society,  as  Paris  is 
not  France.  And  even  when  w^e  note 
the  popularity  of  stories  presenting  a  life 
of  friction  and  a  dismal  close,  we  are 
cheered  to  think  that  there  must  be  an 
immense  amount  of  verve,  happiness,  and 
optimism  among  the  people  who  can  read 
such  things.  They  must  also  be  largely 
read  by  too  comfortable  people,  who 
never  come  into  contact  with  life's  care 


140     THE    EFFECT    OF    LITERATURE 

or  tragedy  except  in  their  easy-chair.  I 
do  not  suppose  doctors,  lawyers,  or 
ministers  read  much  of  the  pessimist  or 
spasmodic  novel.  They  have  their  hearts 
harrowed  with  the  real  thing,  which 
imagination  should  enable  us  either  to 
glorify  or  to  forget,  and  should  not 
merely  reproduce  and  exploit.  So,  when 
one  notes  the  appetite  for  novels  and 
plays  which  turn  on  married  infidelity 
and  heartbreak,  one  may  perhaps  reflect 
that  there  must  be  much  wholesome  and 
fearless  wedlock  in  the  inquisitive  audiences 
that  enjoy  such  things.  They  represent 
something,  like  dukedoms,  which  does  not 
enter  the  life  of  that  public.  It  is  not 
easy  to  think  of  any  member  of  a  family 
being  able  to  bear  the  representation  of 
such  things  if  they  had  actually  invaded 
it.  You  cannot,  it  is  said,  speak  of  a 
rope  among  the  relatives  of  the  hanged. 

I  am  sure,  therefore,  that  much  of  the 


THE    EFFECT    OF    LITERATURE     141 

laxity  that  invades  our  idea  of  marriage 
is  due  to  what  Carlyle  so  rejoiced  in — the 
literary  person  as  priest  or  mentor,  with 
the  higher  naturalism  as  his  capital.  And 
it  is  a  fact  bound  to  have  serious  conse- 
quences for  ethic  and  society,  that  our 
youth  forms  such  ideas  as  it  has  upon 
these  matters  from  its  favourite  litera- 
ture, chiefly  from  novels  whose  only  religion 
is  but  inflated  passion,  and  seldom  from 
serious  and  studious  teachers  of  social 
ethic,  or  from  the  one  teacher  of  Christian 
ethic,  the  Church. 

I  am  not  asking  if  that  is  the  fault  of 
the  Church's  teachers  in  avoiding  or 
neglecting  such  subjects.  To  an  extent 
it  is.  But  I  am  only  noting  the  fact. 
And  it  is  particularly  unfortunate  in 
regard  to  the  moral  culture  of  women. 
It  may  be  said  that  that  is  mostly  effected 
by  the  romantic  way,  by  the  stories 
they  read.  Now,  apart  from  those  writers 
who  are  contemptuous  of  ethics   in  the 


142    THE    EFFECT    OF    LITERATURE! 

treatment  of  passion,  and  apart  from 
those  who  hate  Christian  ethic  in  par- 
ticular, the  capital  of  all  but  the  very 
greatest  imaginative  writers  is  the  passions 
"per  se,  and  especially  the  passion  of  love. 
And  their  principle  is  apt  to  be,  "  Love 
is  enough,"  with  a  tendency  to  pass  on 
and  say,  "  Love  is  its  own  law." 

I  have  already  regretted  that  the  minds 
of  the  young  are  so  filled,  and  even 
stuffed,  with  the  idea  of  such  love.  It  stirs 
the  regret,  not  only  of  such  teachers 
as  I  have  named,  but  of  earnest  writers 
in  other  countries.  I  am  not  here  of  course 
speaking  of  sensual  passion.  In  some 
ways  that  does  less  mischief  than  fantastic 
or  platonic  passion,  passion  imaginative 
and  transferable — 

"Ever  let  the  fancy  roam. 
Fancy  never  is  at  home." 

Passion  is  saved  by  the  element  which 
raises  love  above,  not  the  sensuous  only, 
but    also    the    fantastic,  to    the    faithful 


THE    EFFECT    OF   LITERATURE    143 

and   the   moral.     And  platonic   affection 

g 

mostly  ends  in  plutonic.  r 

The  capital  of  the  story-teller  is  natural 
love,  and  an  infinite  variety  of  fantasias 
are  played  on  its  elemental  notes.  And 
there  is  an  incessant  titillation  of  those 
interests  and  that  side  of  the  nature. 
Natural  love  comes  to  be  the  one  in- 
terest life  has  for  many  such  minds.  The 
supremacy  of  such  love  becomes  the  onl}^ 
principle  that  quickens  life.  Religion, 
which  should  rule  life,  has  no  creative  or 
regulative  place.  What  novelist  handles 
the  soul  ?  And,  unhappily,  some  forms  of 
religion  encourage  that  note.  We  even 
have  erotic  religion.  People  are  told  in 
all  kinds  of  ways  that  God  is  love,  and 
Christianity  is  the  religion  of  love — 
people  whose  one  idea  of  love  is  natural 
affection.  Holy  demand  goes  out  of  sight. 
God  is  offered  as  the  glorification  of  natural 
affection,  or  its  benediction.  And  the 
only   ethic   such  a  religion  knows  is   an 


< ,- 


144    THE    EFFECT    OF    LITERATURE 

ethic  of  allowance  or  pity,  not  of  the  holy. 
It  all  co-operates  sub-consciously  with 
the  habit  of  a  literary  age  to  make 
morality  imaginative  at  best  and  senti- 
mental at  worst.  It  canonises  natural 
and  instinctive  Humanity,  and  makes  re- 
ligion itself  egoistic. 

And  to  such  a  frame  of  mind,  where 
worship  is  unknown,  where  obedience  but 
galls,  where  sympathy  is  the  one  living 
thing,  where  all  above  us  is  but  a  dark  and 
often  tragic  fate,  where  all  beyond  us  is  a 
dreary  desert,  with  the  old  lights  quenched 
by  death,  and  nothing  but  mist  coming 
down — I  say  to  such  a  frame  of  mind 
the  suggestion  of  temporary  marriage 
comes  with  a  certain  plausibility,  as  recog- 
nising the  sanctity  of  love  alone  in  the 
union,  and  as  ending  the  Pharisaism  of 
union  when  love  fades  from  its  first  glow. 
The  idea  of  leasehold  marriage,  I  have 
said,  rests  on  such  erotic  alone  and  not 
upon  faith  or  ethic.     It  rests  on  the  fallacy 


THE    EFFECT    OF    LITERATURE     145 

that  passion  alone  consecrates  union,  and 

passion   in   its   intensity  rather  than  its 

quality.     That  is  Eroticism.     And  it  will 

even  venture  to  press  into  its  service  much 

current  talk   of   Christianity,  and   of   its 

ethic  as  the  ethic  of  love.      Augustine  is 

ignorantly  quoted  :   "  Love,  and  do  as  you 

will!"     John   is    wrested    and   debased: 

"  Who  dwelleth  in  love  dwelleth  in  God." 

But  there  is  more  in  love  than  passion, 

however  great  or  imaginative.     The  love 

that  hallows  marriage  has  a  moral  nature 

in  it,  and  a  moral  society  round  it.     And 

Christianity  is  not  the  religion  of  love,  but 

of  holy  and  therefore  atoning  love,  which 

makes  it  all  the  more  divine  as  it  makes  it 

less  promptly  popular.    It  is  the  religion  of 

a  love  which  holds  of  the  Eternal,  and  works 

under  moral  and  social  conditions.    And, 

as  such  holy  love,  it  is  very  different  from 

that  natural  and  instinctive  love  which 

makes  literary  capital  or  suits  imaginative 

purposes.      So    that   it   makes   but    poor 
10 


146    THE   EFFECT    OF   LITERATURE 

stories,  and  prescribes  a  much  more  serious 
ethic  than  we  like  in  the  hours  when  we 
take  refuge  in  fiction. 

It  is  this  moral  and  holy  element  in  love 
that  is  the  Christian  soul  of  married  love  at 
last.  We  speak  truly  of  Holy  Matrimony. 
It  is  this  holy,  this  moral,  element  in  mar- 
riage that  distinguishes  it  from  mere  con- 
tract which  unites  natural  instinct,  pure 
and  steady  as  the  instinct  may  often  be. 
And  because  of  this  moral  element  both 
State  and  Church  are  not  merely  inter- 
ested in  marriage,  but  it  is  both  a 
churchly  and  a  civil  institution,  even  the 
crucial  meeting-point  of  State  and  Church 
(as  we  shall  soon  see).  And  the  object  of 
a  religious  ceremony  in  marriage  is  not 
simply  to  make  things  sweet  and  decorous, 
nor  to  be  an  opportunity  for  edification ; 
but  it  moralises  marriage  from  a  height 
where  man  has  his  final  destiny  in  God, 
and  where  the  moral  is  the  holy. 

It  is  the  way  of  the  wild  poet  to  speak 


THE    EFFECT    OF    LITERATURE    147 

of  love  as  a  holy  thing  in  itself.  But  it 
is  nothing  of  the  kind,  unless  we  reduce 
religion  to  refined  naturalism.  Sacred 
you  may  perhaps  call  it,  but  not  holy. 
And  the  new  ethic,  which  is  based  on 
naturalism,  erotic,  or  pity,  we  have  seen 
going  on  to  say  not  only  that  motherhood 
is  holy,  but  that  all  motherhood  is  holy, 
that  the  right  to  a  child  belongs  to  every 
woman,  and  that  we  should  drop  the 
cruel  bar  that  society  places  between 
motherhood  married  and  single. 

Such  extreme  claims  are  truly  not  very 
loud  here,  at  least  not  yet ;  but  abroad 
they  are  not  only  loud,  but  public  and 
powerful,  promoted  by  most  effective 
writers  of  both  sexes.  And  they  will  be 
here  ere  long  ;  for  the  books  are  being 
translated  and  preachers  enlisted.  Eng- 
land does  not  get  the  first  shock  of 
these  revolutionary  blasts,  but  they  al- 
ways reach  us  in  the  end.  And  we 
ought  to  be  ready  in  advance.    And  we 


148    THiE    EFFECT    OF   LITERATURE 

ought  to  be  clear  that  sentiment  is  no 
foundation  for  morals,  that  passion  does 
not  contain  its  own  law,  that  even  proper 
pity  and  private  mercy  for  the  misled 
mother  cannot  prescribe  the  law  of  society 
in  such  a  central  matter. 

Let  us  use  every  kind  of  philanthropic 
means  to  help  the  victims  and  mitigate 
the  curse.  Let  us  see  that  the  seducer 
and  deserter  gets  his  due.  But  philan- 
thropy is  not  ethic,  pity  is  not  morality  ; 
it  certainly  is  not  the  base  of  public 
morality  ;  and  society  cannot  live  on  a 
mercy  which  takes  no  note  of  the  holy, 
any  more  than  a  Church  can.  To  much 
love  much  is  forgiven.  But  it  has  to  be 
forgiven.  And  a  great  love,  if  it  be  no 
more  than  a  passion,  can  lead  men  and 
women  into  the  very  things  which  require 
most  forgiveness,  and  yet  make  public 
forgiveness  as  hard  as  Christ's  cross.  Much 
has  to  be  forgiven  in  an  agony  by  holy 
love  to  guilty  ;  to  a  soul's  supreme  love 


THE   EFFECT  OF  LITERATURE    149 

diverted  upon  man  alone.  The  chief 
guilt  of  most  men  is  made  by  their 
treatment  of  some  form  of  love,  human 
or  divine.  And  the  great  tragedy  of 
life  is  not  the  failure  of  love,  but  the 
failure  which  led  to  it — the  failure  of 
faith. 

One  thing  more.  It  is  easy  for  social 
Pharisees  or  starveling  natures  to  take 
high  and  mighty  ground  on  such  matters, 
and  to  lay  down  prescriptions  and  pro- 
scriptions which  in  their  spirit  may  be 
farther  than  the  sinners  from  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven.  It  is  hoped  that  nothing 
here  said  may  sound  pitiless  towards 
those  to  whom,  as  Plato  says,  love  comes 
as  a  mania,  on  whom  it  lies  like  a  doom, 
and  works  as  a  Sapphic  curse  rather  than 
a  Christian  blessing.  Let  those  who  resent 
the  exigency  of  Christian  ethic  here  re- 
member that  it  came  from  no  bloodless 
spirit,  but  from  the  greatest  Love  that 
ever  entered  history,  and  from  its  lovers, 


150     THE   EFFECT   OF   LITERATURE 

from  the  greatest  Soul  that  ever  sought 
mankind,  from  One  whose  heart  broke  in 
the  passion  of  hallowing  of  that  holy  love 
which  it  knew  to  be  the  most  powerful, 
priceless,  and  perfect  thing  in  all  the  world, 
and  the  guarantee  of  its  richest  and 
conclusive  bliss. 


EPILOGUE 

TT  is  one  of  the  unhappy  features  of 
our  time  that  the  most  deep  and 
far-reaching  issues  are  referred  for  a  verdict 
to  so  many  minds  that  have  never 
been  taught  by  any  due  training  to 
realise  their  real  ground  and  their  im- 
mense and  searching  effects,  minds  that 
dismiss  all  that  is  not  journalistic  as 
academic,  and  prefer  the  amateur  to  the 
seer  or  the  sage.  The  questions  involved 
in  sex  are  among  these.  Next  to 
religion  they  raise  the  most  momentous 
and  solemn  issues  for  all  history. 
Most  men  who  come  to  grief,  it  has 
been  said,  wreck  either  upon  God  or 
upon  woman.  And  yet  both  orders  of 
question  are  handled,  I  do  not  say  merely 

161 


152  EPILOGUE 

with  a  levity  of  manner,  but  with  a  levity 
of  mind  which  is  not  only  unworthy  but 
incompetent  and  unfertile,  and  may  en- 
tail great  peril  for  the  future.  I  trust 
these  pages  may  contribute  something 
to  mitigate  the  violence  of  this  anomaly, 
and  to  raise  our  interest  to  the  range 
and  dignity  of  matters  with  which  society 
has  so  intimately  and  eternally  to  do. 


Printtd  by  Hazell,  Watson  dt  Yiney,  Ld.,  London  and  Aykabury. 


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